Dr. Susan Treiser, M.D., Ph.D

Susan Treiser, co-founder and co-director of IVF New Jersey, is one of the few female board-certified Reproductive Endocrinologists in her field.  A native of Canada, Susan attended Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., where she obtained both a PhD in pharmacology and her medical degree.

Raised in Montreal, and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Susan’s perspective on life and her own future were colored by her parents’ history.  As young teenagers, her parents were torn from their homes in Czechoslovakia and put in concentration camps.  Her mother, Fay, lost her parents and a brother, and her father, Bernard Lebovic lost his mother.   Fay and Bernard survived the concentration camp and, when released, returned to their village.  In an odd set of circumstances, Fay’s eldest brother married Bernard’s eldest sister.  “Eventually three from one family married three from the other,” Treiser says.  “They all took care of each other.”

Bernard and Fay Lebovic emigrated from Europe to Israel, where they married.  From Israel they came to Canada where they opened a knitting mill.  Thinking back on the stories she’d heard as a child, Susan marvels at the fact that, “My parents didn’t know the language or the culture, but taught me and my sister, a marketing executive in Canada, to live life, enjoy life, and value education as the one thing that cannot be taken away from you.”

With the advice of her parents and their unceasing encouragement, Susan never veered from her determination to achieve all her goals in life.  She attended McGill, receiving a degree in science.  Susan married at the age of 19, and following graduation she and her husband moved to Washington DC., where Treiser attended Georgetown University School of Medicine, obtaining combination degrees in pharmacology and medicine.  During medical school, Susan Treiser gave birth to her two sons, Mathew and Adam.   

During Dr. Treiser’s residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, she was awarded a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.  At Columbia, Dr. Treiser excelled in her field.  She was awarded a faculty appointment as Clinical Assistant in Obstetrics and Gynecology and helped hundreds of patients achieve their dream of parenthood in the university’s In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) Program.

Despite her success, Dr. Treiser was confident that, outside of the university atmosphere, she could make infertility treatment more personalized and compassionate.  Teaming up with her colleague, Dr. Michael Darder, she left Columbia to establish an advanced fertility practice that would rival the success of large university-based programs.

In 1990, Dr. Susan Treiser and Michael Darder founded IVF New Jersey in Somerset.  The Freehold office opened in 2000 and Dr. Jeryl Natofsky joined the IVF NJ team to lead the team there.  Dr. Melissa Yih joined IVF NJ in 2002, heading up the Hamilton location, and the Annandale office opened in April, 2006, headed by Dr. Marcus Jurema who joined the practice in July, 2007.  Since 1990, IVF New Jersey has become the fertility center gold standard, achieving exceptional IVF success rates while providing highly personalized patient care in a comfortable and private setting.  IVF NJ patients receive an extraordinary level of involvement from the physicians and staff.  Patient’s phone calls are returned by the physicians.

In the United States today, infertility affects one in six couples trying to conceive.  Having a child is a profound life event and fertility treatment reaches into every facet of the lives of the people trying to conceive.  Infertility is a problem that is difficult to anticipate and there is little preparation to deal with the emotions involved.  Life becomes considerably stressful, affecting a couple’s relationship, their friendships, family, work, and finances. 

New Jersey is one of just 14 states to mandate coverage for infertility treatments. The Family Building Act requires insurance policies that cover more than 50 people and provide pregnancy-related benefits to cover the cost of the diagnosis and treatment of infertility. The law defines infertility as the disease or condition that results in the inability to get pregnant after two years of unprotected sex (female partner under the age of 35) or one year of unprotected sex (female partner over the age of 35) or the inability to carry a pregnancy to term. 

Coverage includes, but is not limited to, diagnosis, medications, surgery, embryo transfer, and artificial insemination. Some states that mandate infertility coverage – including Arkansas, Hawaii, and Texas – insist that a patient’s eggs be fertilized with her spouse’s sperm. New Jersey has no such restriction.New Jersey’s act also includes cutting-edge treatment, including in vitro fertilization, gamete intra fallopian transfer, zygote intra fallopian transfer, and intracytoplasmic sperm injection, but insists that the patient first “has used all reasonable, less expensive, and medically appropriate treatments.”  IVF NJ accepts most major insurance plans including Horizon, Aetna, United Health Network (Oxford & United Health Care), Cigna, QualCare, Magnacare, AmeriHealth, Health Net and Integrated Health Plan.  For those without insurance coverage, a discounted rate is offered for IVF.

“When I was pregnant, no one was married, let alone pregnant,” Treiser recalls, “The majority of my friends waited until they were through with their residencies.” In the biology versus culture clash that is at the heart of many a failure to conceive a child, the wait became a problem for many of her friends. “A lot needed help, in vitro,” she says. “It didn’t work for everybody.” 

The human female body is programmed to conceive at a relatively young age.  The prime ages for conception are between 18 and 30.  A woman on the career fast track is more likely to wait to begin a family and many professional women feel that they must be well advanced in their careers before taking the time to start a family.  

But there are circumstances other than the reproductive years slipping away that can cause fertility challenges.  Premature menopause, chemo-therapy, and ovarian surgery are among the most common.  Egg donation and egg freezing are options for women with these challenges.

With a very short wait time for matching donors with patients and exceptionally high success rates, IVF New Jersey is internationally renowned for its egg donation program.  Each egg donor is personally interviewed to determine psychological health and is medically scrutinized through physical examination and thorough review of family history.  

In 2005 the IVF NJ team established an egg freezing program and that same year they achieved one of the first pregnancies from cryopreserved eggs.  Women who are not ready to start a family but wish to preserve their fertility can choose this procedure.

“A decade ago, the procedure was limited to young women facing chemotherapy for cancer treatment,” Treiser says.  “These days it’s more like an insurance policy.  The success rate has risen to somewhere between 30 and 40 percent and is open for healthy women who have decided to postpone motherhood for any number of reasons.  Now, even healthy young women are having their eggs harvested as an option for motherhood in the future. There is no right or wrong way to start a family.  At IVF New Jersey we’re about choices.”  IVF New Jersey physicians are leaders in the field of reproductive medicine.  Simple infertility diagnostic and treatment services will benefit some patients, while others need more sophisticated approaches.  For this reason, IVF NJ offers expertise in a wide range of services for men and women.  Some of the services provided by IVF New Jersey include In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Blastocyst Transfer, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), Gestational Carriers, Egg Donation, Oocyte Cryopreservation (Egg  Freezing), Insemination with Donor Sperm, and Pre implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). Semen analysis and  Hyster-osalpinogram (HSG) are performed by IVF NJ physicians on-site, at the Somerset office, which enables patients to receive all of their treatment at one location.  The state-of-the-art facility has its own full-scale operating suite, and plenty of treatment and consultation rooms to ensure  efficiency.

Twenty-eight years after the first In-Vitro birth, “The number of clinics, cycles performed, and babies born as the result of Artificial Reproductive Technology (ART) has steadily increased,” says Dr. Treiser, “Many women who put off starting families for their careers are seeking out clinics sooner.  They are simply better informed.  Couples are being more proactive and not waiting until they get significantly older. A woman should seek treatment if she is under 35 and has been unable to conceive after 12 months of regular, unprotected intercourse or after 6 months if she is over the age of 35.”   

In her practice, Treiser has moved beyond simple in vitro fertilization. “For the past eight years,” she says, “we’ve been doing blastocyst transfer.” This is a technique through which embryos are kept in the petri dish for an extra two days. Those that survive and are healthy after five days are more likely to result in a pregnancy than are those that are transferred after three days. Therefore, generally only two are used. Success rates are high, up to 70 percent for women under 35, and most pregnancies result in the birth of a single child. 

An average woman is born with approximately 300,000 eggs, all she is ever going to have. Each month one matures, and about 1,000 more cease maturation and are reabsorbed. By age 40, only several thousand are left, and they tend to respond poorly to signals from the pituitary gland trying to get them to mature. In her early-20s, a woman has a 25 percent chance of conceiving in each month of unprotected sex. By her mid 30s, the percentage is down to 15 percent, and by her late 30s, it drops to 10 percent. Furthermore, an older mother who does manage to conceive has a far greater chance of miscarrying. Women in their 20s miscarry 12 to 15 percent of the time, while women in their 40s have a 50 percent chance of miscarrying. In older women, there is also a greater incidence of gynecological disorders, including pelvic inflammation and endometriosis, which can interfere with conception. 

Dr. Treiser is well known for her caring, competent approach to reproductive care.  Under her supervision, the IVF New Jersey embryology laboratory has repeatedly achieved “Accreditation with Distinction.”  She is the author of “A Woman Doctor’s Guide to Infertility” Essential Facts and Up-To-The-Minute Information on the Techniques and Treatments to Achieve Pregnancy. Treiser has been published in Science magazine and, in 2000, was the sole medical speaker at the International Seminar of Reproductive Ethics at Princeton University.  In the same year, together with Dr. Darder, she received the 2000 Zenith Award from the New Jersey chapter of RESOLVE, a national fertility support group.  Dr. Treiser received the Family Building Award from the American Fertility Association in November of 2006 and chaired a panel on fertility at the New Jersey Governor’s Conference for Women. Susan Treiser, M.D., Ph.D., one of the few female directors of an IVF center in the U.S., has appeared on the Today Show, CNN, The Discovery Channel, Continental Airlines, Comcast Network, NBC, CBS, and Fox News.  In 2005 and 2008, the embryology laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Treiser, received the Laboratory Excellence Award, the highest recognition available.  In 2008 Dr. Treiser was named a “Top Doctor” in the Reproductive Endocrinology category of New York Magazine’s annual list of the state’s best physicians. Along with co-director, Michael Darder, M.D., Dr. Treiser hosts the “Ask the Experts” column in Conceive Magazine, a national publication.  

Under Dr. Treiser’s direction, IVF New Jersey, one of the largest fertility practices in the world, has become an international destination fertility center. As Board Certified Reproductive Endocrinologists, IVF NJ physicians are leaders in the field of reproductive medicine. Couples have come from as far away as Australia to experience the vision, expertise, and compassion of the physicians and staff.  IVF NJ partners with its clients to successfully grow families and offers a wide variety of infertility services and solutions, including working with same sex couples. 

IVF New Jersey is one of the largest fertility centers in the state with convenient locations in Hamilton, Somerset, Freehold, and Annandale.  Dr. Susan Treiser may be contacted 365 days a year at 800.IVF.NJ44 or visit the IVF NJ web site at ivfnj.com.