The burden of infertility in New Zealand: A baseline survey of prevalence and service use.

Background: Studies in southern New Zealand indicate that up to a quarter of women experienced infertility, likely due to delay in childbearing. However, these findings may not be generalisable to the whole population.

Aims: To assess the lifetime prevalence of infertility and evidence for disparities for New Zealand men and women in a nationally representative sample.

Ovulation monitoring and fertility knowledge: Their relationship to fertility experience in a cross-sectional study.

Background: Various aspects of fertility knowledge, including the timing of the fertile window, have consistently been found to be poor. Limited evidence also suggests ovulation monitoring to time intercourse could be common. However, there have been no studies that compare these two aspects of fertility and women's fertility/infertility experiences.

Infertility and outcomes for infertile women in Otago and Southland.

Aim: To establish the burden of infertility in women residing in Otago and Southland.

Methods: A survey of women aged 25-50 years residing in Otago and Southland was conducted to determine the proportions that experienced infertility, sought medical help and resolved their infertility, and to assess the determinants of these outcomes.

Results: Of the 1,125 participants, 21.

Cumulative incidence of infertility in a New Zealand birth cohort to age 38 by sex and the relationship with family formation.

Objective: To estimate the cumulative incidence of infertility for men and women in a population-based sample.

Design: Longitudinal study of a birth cohort.

Setting: Research unit.

Development of clinical priority access criteria for assisted reproduction and its evaluation on 1386 infertile couples in New Zealand.

Background: In New Zealand ranking patients for elective, publicly funded procedures uses clinical priority access criteria (CPAC). A CPAC to prioritize patients seeking assisted reproductive technology (ART) was developed in 1997 and implemented nationwide in 2000. This study describes the development of the ART CPAC tool and its evaluation on 1386 couples referred to a single tertiary service from 1998 to 2005.

Parental information sharing with donor insemination conceived offspring: a follow-up study.

Background: Studies of parental decision making regarding information sharing with offspring conceived as a result of donor insemination are almost all based on a 'one point in time' design. This study reports on parental decision making at two points in time, Time 1 and Time 2, 14 years apart.

Methods: Forty-four of 57 families (77%) who had agreed to take part in a follow-up study were interviewed.

The donor, the father, and the imaginary constitution of the family: parents' constructions in the case of donor insemination.

Current international policy trends in the field of medically assisted conception are moving towards increased openness of information regarding the nature of conception where donated gametes are involved. In the case of donor insemination this means that the donor is no longer anonymous, offspring have the right to access information about the donor's identity, and parents are encouraged to tell children the nature of their donor-assisted conception. Until recently, however, the practice of donor insemination has tended to create the conditions for ignoring, or erasing, the existence of the donor as the provider of the gametes.

Sample-size calculations for trials that inform individual treatment decisions: a 'true-choice' approach.

Background: Sample size decisions for clinical trials should be taken in such a way as to maximize informed choice by reducing scientific uncertainty about the consequences of an intervention.

Purpose: Recent approaches to trial design have focused on the potential decision impact of the trial when deciding whether the trial should be undertaken, and how large it ought to be. For the most part these approaches are concerned with the impact of trials either on clinical opinion or on collective reimbursement recommendations.

Cost-utility analysis when not everyone wants the treatment: modeling split-choice bias.

Not all clinically eligible patients will necessarily accept a new treatment. Cost-utility analysis recognizes this by multiplying the mean incremental expected utility (EU) by the participation rate to obtain the utility gain per head. However, the mean EU gain over all patients in a defined clinical category is traditionally used as a proxy for the mean EU gain over the subpopulation of acceptors.

Survey of Australasian clinicians' prior beliefs concerning lipiodol flushing as a treatment for infertility: a Bayesian study.

Objective: To evaluate clinicians' beliefs concerning the effectiveness of lipiodol flushing as a treatment for unexplained infertility, and to integrate these prior beliefs with evidence from randomised trials.

Design: Survey.

Setting: Specialists in Australasian in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics in 2001.