Fertility and Reproductive Surgery, Southeastern Center

Welcome to the Southeastern Fertility Center's Home Page

The Southeastern Center for Fertility and Reproductive Surgery offers this site as an information resource for couples coping with the difficulties of infertility. Just as our center provides the most advanced treatment for our patients, this site provides the most recent and accurate medical information concerning infertility and reproductive surgery.

Located in Knoxville, Tennessee, the center specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of male and female infertility problems. Under the direction of Jeffrey A. Keenan MD, HCLD, our patients receive the highest quality medical care available in the region. Dr. Keenan is one of the most experienced and respected specialists in infertility and reproductive medicine and surgery.

We provide updates on this site to ensure you are receiving the latest information. If you wish to schedule an appointment with us or have questions, please call us at (865) 777-0088 or click here to use our appointment request form.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Keenan

Dr. Keenan Recognized

Once again, Dr. Keenan has been recognized as one the Best Doctors in America, by Best Doctors Inc., an independent firm which uses a variety of measures to find the nation's top MD's. Dr. Keenan responds: " I am humbled by this honor, and believe that our philosophy of always putting patients first, while at the same time staying at the leading edge of scientific advancement and patient care, has allowed us to again achieve this significant distinction."

SPRING UPDATE 2012

We are anxiously anticipating our typical increase in treatment cycles and pregnancies that occur each spring. This season has long been known to be a fertile one not only for the earth, but for couples as well. So, if you’ve taken a break from treatment, or just plain given up, call for an appointment today!

Also, we’d like to remind those of you who have trouble getting away from work for your appointments that we now have evening hours on Thursdays! Although we typically work until 6 pm that evening, later appointments are available with enough lead time.

Pardon our construction!

Please pardon the dust while a new tenant builds out the remaining space on the west end of our building. This should be completed in a month to six weeks. We do not anticipate any problems with parking during this time.

Literature Review
It is worth repeating a review that we have previously done regarding the outcomes of IVF in minority groups in the U.S. The study by Fujimoto et al in Fertility and Sterility from 2010 showed that minority groups routinely have less favorable outcomes with IVF than Caucasians in our country. Specifically, the chances for live birth after IVF were 10% lower for Asians, 13% lower for Hispanics, and 38% lower for African Americans. Furthermore, both preterm delivery and growth restriction were significantly increased in these groups. The cause of this is unknown, and more research is ongoing. However, it behooves us in the ART community to know this information and to appropriately manage the expectations of our minority patients undergoing assisted reproduction.

“Natural Cycle” IVF – there have been more articles in the last year on the alternative of natural cycle IVF for select couples. Although most couples would prefer to use conventional ovarian stimulation in IVF due to its higher success rates, natural cycle IVF still has a place. In particular, younger women (less than 35) with low egg supply (“diminished ovarian reserve”) and those women who prefer to avoid ovarian stimulation medications due to a history of breast cancer or other reasons are prime candidates for this treatment. Although the success rates are usually only about 10% per started cycle, it is important to note that costs per cycle are much lower, especially if the couple does not get to the point of egg retrieval or embryo transfer. Feel free to make an appt. if you are interested in learning more about this increasingly popular technology!

Supplements for PCOS? – Metformin therapy, one of the mainstays of treatment in the insulin resistance associated with PCOS, is poorly tolerated due to harsh GI side effects. Recent articles have shown that 3 supplements – N-Acetyl Cysteine, d-Chiro Inositol, and Chromium Picolinate, are also helpful in this condition. Importantly, they have fewer side effects than Metformin, and are essentially non-toxic in standard doses. Our nurse practitioner, Autumn Galbraith, is an expert in the use of these supplements and would be glad to answer any questions you have about them.

Optimizing IVF outcomes – A new Cochrane Review article has confirmed that there is substantial benefit of performing embryo transfer in hyaluronin-rich media. One of these products, and the one we use at SFC, is “EmbryoGlue”. So far our experience is too limited to assess the improvement in pregnancy rates that we may see, but stay tuned!