Analyze everything. When we set up Olive, we wanted to be able to monitor every detail of our practice. Collecting and analyzing data, as boring as it can be, is the only way you can control and improve the quality of your work. Dr. Nakhuda, our resident data-geek (I hope he doesn't read this blog!), has been monitoring a patient's AMH levels and created a report this weekend.

Anti-Mullerian Hormone, AMH, is a hormone that can indicate how many eggs a woman has in her ovaries. As egg number declines so does AMH and so does fertility. AMH is an excellent predictor of fertility and can even predict when a woman will enter menopause. Many large centres have published their AMH data so that other physicians can learn what different AMH levels mean for women. We follow other clinic's data but also our own. Here is a simple graph of our patient's AMH levels (all patients pooled together) compared to their age:

The black vertical bars indicate the range of values seen in different age groups. For example, a 38-year-old woman might have an AMH as high as 1.3 and as low as 0.7. The woman with the AMH of 1.3 will have better fertility, in general, than the woman who has an AMH of 0.7.

You can have your AMH level tested at Olive, and some other labs in the province. The cost is $147 and it's a single blood test. In my practice, I encourage most women to have their AMH checked unless I have performed an antral follicle count on them (by ultrasound) and am confident I know their egg count.

More data = more knowledge = better care = more babies!