Sarah Keller

Dr. Keller is very knowledgeable and an expert in her field. I've never felt she has pushed us into spending more money than we absolutely have to. She has not recommended PGS testing for our second IVF cycle, citing that it does not improve birth rates. She never rushes us out of the office and takes the time to answer all questions thoroughly. She often seems flustered or nervous and for that reason I would recommend other doctors in this practice over her.

Do your research. Ask questions. Tell her what's bothering you. Trust her plan of care.

The staff and Dr. Keller all seem invested in a positive outcome for us. When I came in with suspected miscarriage everyone was very somber and supportive. It seemed like they were disappointed along with us.

In 2016 I did 3 clomid IUIs without trigger shot. None were successful and I was disappointed that no Ultrasound or hCG blood levels were obtained during any of the cycles. I didn't see Dr. Keller at all during this time and really felt like nobody cared if they were successful or not. Cycle 1 IVF was better. I do not have ovulatory dysfunction so Keller recommend an agonist protocol for my first IVF cycle. In retrospect I responded quickly to the medications, maybe too quickly because we got 10 eggs and only 2 5-day embryos. Our fresh transfer resulted in a chemical pregnancy and our FET resulted in a miscarriage at 7 weeks. Dr. Keller said that a quick stimulation can result in poorer egg quality. For cycle two she is doing a long antagonist which will hopefully allow slower development of my follicles and give better egg quality.

Amy is very knowledgeable and professional. She is prompt to call with results and communicates effectively with Dr. Keller and her patients. She's not particularly friendly but I trust her.

In my opinion this is the only place to go for fertility treatment in the St. Louis area. The volume of patients and staff allows them to be open every day of the week so you never have to delay your IUI until the Monday after your Friday surge. They also have their own embryology lab and the ability to do your egg retrieval on Sundays if that's when your follicles are ready. Once a week all of the doctors in the practice meet to discuss all of their patients. This means you don't have just one doctor, you have six physicians collaborating on YOUR plan. Also they have the entire Barnes Jewish Hospital complex and doctors at their disposal. This means that for example if you have endometriosis that requires surgery, they can refer you to someone in their system who can perform your surgery. Because they share that same computer systems, all the physicians are on the same page about your care. Weaknesses include: lack of privacy when checking in; the woman checking me in always asks if I want to pay my bill before I've ever received a bill in the mail; the Ultrasound techs are not friendly.

The line to check in can get long some days but once checked in blood draws and Ultrasounds are done quickly.

I think IUIs were around $350 each plus the copay for Clomid. For one egg retrieval/IVF with ICSI, a frozen transfer and fresh transfer we paid almost $13k and my insurance covered $4k.

Dr. Keller was open to both single and double embryo transfer for us. We elected single transfer to avoid a twin or triplet pregnancy.

Being a nurse, I have learned about effective communication. Having effective communication with physicians is always key to experience excellent care. After my husband and I miscarried our baby boy at 17 weeks, I learned to be an advocate for my care even more. I did not have complications after my D&C surgery after miscarriage. I however was diagnosed with an uterine arterial venous malformation which is very rare. I was under my general OBGYN at the time I was diagnosed and Dr. Keller which is my infertility specialist. Many doctors were consulted to see if they had an idea of how to treat the AVM in my uterus. A month or so after my diagnosis, I was told it would not be in my best interest to carry children for my safety and health. Dr. Keller was my main physician who helped me through my time of this diagnosis. She understood how hard this time was because we have never had any children and I was only 26 years old at the time. Every time I was seen by her, I felt as if she was fighting for answers for my husband and I, seeing everything in our best interest. Time went by and I ended up hemorrhaging, which is a complication of the uterine AVM, and admitted to the hospital multiple times in a months span. While the bleeding would start and stop, the doctors were trying to figure out how to save my fertility without doing anything to drastic. After failed attempts to do so, I ultimately had to make the decision to get a hysterectomy for my health and safety. Dr. Keller was always there, one call away, to answer all my questions and concerns. I wanted to make sure that this was the best decision for myself and that there weren't any other options available. I trusted her decision, as did my husband. Now, fast forward to a little over a year later, and were are about to do an IVF cycle to ultimately have a surrogate carry our baby. After a couple of months of trying to heal mentally and physically, my husband and I are ready for our next steps into starting our family. The first appointment we had with Dr. Keller to meet to chat about IVF was one I will never forget. After sitting with her, discussing all that is involved with IVF, Dr. Keller looked at us and said, "I want you to get your baby! That is my goal here!". It made me feel as if I wasn't alone and I felt as if my husband and I are in the best hands. She always asks how I am doing when I meet with her, how I am healing, and just how I feel overall. My experiences that I have gone through in the past year and half are something I never expected. I never dreamt of not being able to carry our children. It sure does make it easier having Dr. Keller sincerely care about my husband and I and our ultimate goal which is to start our family. There is nothing bad I could say about Dr. Keller!

That she is trustworthy and will fight for the best care for you. She will always listen and respect your decisions. Effective communication!

I have always felt like a human under the care of Dr. Keller. After going through some testing for infertility, we became pregnant on our own. We miscarried our baby boy at 17 weeks. I was then diagnosed with an AVM in my uterus and ended up hemorrhaging a month after my miscarriage. I was in and out of the hospital with complications and trying to figure out how to save my fertility with my new diagnosis. I was always in contact with Dr. Keller and trusted her input on everything regarding our decisions. Ultimately, a hysterectomy had to happen for my safety and health. At age 26, with no children, it was and for ever will be the hardest decision of my life. Dr. Keller was there for my husband and I during that time and is now guiding us through IVF to do egg retrieval to have a surrogate. I am forever thankful for her care!

I am about 3 weeks away from our very first round of IVF.

The nursing staff and the care coordinator have been wonderful so far in our journey through IVF. My husband and I tend to have many questions because we are both nurses. They call back in a timely manner and always seem to find the answers if they don't have them for us right away.

Washington University Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Center is well known and the doctors there have the best communication with their patients. They do egg retrievals 7 days a week, and they don't clump everyone into cycles together. They are able to work with each patient one on one.

I will know a more detailed cost estimate soon. Since we are just beginning our first IVF cycle, I am not sure of the overall costs. I estimate it being close to $20,000.

Dr. Keller has discussed her approach to both because of us needing to use a surrogate since I cannot carry. The decision mainly depends on the surrogate and what they agree too, but she does mention it is best to not do a multiple embryo transfer for surrogate to carry. It costs more and many more risks involve is my understanding.

Strengths- she knew our history and us as people. She was open to sugggestions of next steps in treatment and was very knowledgeable in statistics of different procedures like scratch test, assisted hatching, ICSI, etc and she explained procedures and set up expectations for us. She truly cared about us as a couple. She even talked us through next steps on another cycle right after her father passed away. She is selfless. The weakness- because of her compassion I think she was less direct than we needed about my diagnosis of diminished ovarian reserve. She expressed the panel of docs at clinic would advocate for donor eggs but said we could continue to try. In hindsight I feel it would have been better to be more blunt about our chances with own eggs so we could have moved forward with donor eggs sooner. Overall, I think we had to come to that acceptance before anything. I’m glad she introduced the topic to us and moved ahead with lightening speed thereafter

Be proactive and know what you want. She will be there to support your treatment plan and advocate for you.

Because she knew me and my husband as people and our history. She was prepared at meetings and worked with us, our expectations and personally reviewed our outcomes. She cared about me with every negative pregnancy test that happened. She helped us do clinic cycles in between IVF cycles to increase our chances.

With DOR- we tried femara cycle day 5-9 plus follistim but had to convert to IUI. We did 2 antagonist cycles with gonal-f (225) and menopur (225) with one cycle doing an estrogen prime. Last cycle we did estrogen prime plus micro dose Lupron flare anatagonist

I can’t enough about the nursing staff at the clinic. They really kept me going and we there for me when I cried. I loved the nursing staff at the clinic. They knew me by name and were extremely compassionate and excited for us in every cycle.

There are a lot of patients at this clinic but you wouldn’t know it. I don’t know how they remain so personable with so many people in and out the door. We use a patient portal system and everyone is always quick to respond

We had help with insurance. The largest out of pocket cost was donor reimbursement fees which were $5000 plus adminustrative costs which were $3000

She showed us her statistics at the clinic and discussed risks, benefits and chances with eSET & multiple transfers but left the decision up to us ultimately

Dr. Keller is very candid which I appreciate. She gets right to the point. She doesn't sugar coat. I feel that she absolutely has my best interests at heart. I know she has a lot of other patients but I don’t really feel like “just a number” to her. I wish I could see Dr. Keller at every procedure but Washington University rotates doctors doing procedure. However, I think there are many pros to this system. I have had egg retrievals and transfers on holidays, weekends, even Sunday. I appreciate that they have a large group of doctors for this reason. And they meet every week to discuss cases and bounce ideas off of each other.

I would just warn them that they might feel overwhelmed at first or feel like “just a number” but Dr. Keller really cares.

Dr Keller has called me personally on various occasions to discuss my "game plan." She also went to a conference and while there she said she went to some speakers on my condition. This gave her new ideas for my next protocol.

Dr. K switched my to an antagonist for my second retrieval. Therefore I could do a Lupron trigger since the first egg retrieval resulted in mild OHSS. Antagonist with the Lupron trigger was soooo much easier on my body. She also suggested freezing my embryos at 2PN (right after fertilization) rather than grow them to blast and then freeze. I didn’t have luck getting embryos to blast stage during the first IVF. So this way I can still do a frozen transfer (let my body calm down for a couple months) and still have the option of a 3 day transfer if necessary.

My nurse is Amy. She seems very organized and responds to emails quickly. I really appreciate that. There have been a few times when the response comes late in the day and I would worry but I always heard from her! The procedure area nurses are amazing. They are so sweet. I have not met one that I don’t like!

I like that the clinic has a group of doctors. They bounce ideas off of each other. Makes me feel better about my doctor’s protocol knowing that a GROUP of doctors agreed upon it. A new patient should know that their doctor won’t necessarily do their egg retrieval/transfer. Also since it is a teaching hospital, be prepared to have students watching procedures (your doctor will ask your permission first).

For my first cycle (monitoring, retrieval, and transfer), insurance was billed $21,000. This was MORE than I was originally told. Meds were $3,800. Luckily I have fairly good insurance. For my second cycle (monitoring and retrieval - no transfer yet), insurance has been billed $17,862. Meds were about the same.

I've done one transfer so far. We transferred 2 embryos at her suggestion. This was because it was day 5 and they were not quite blasts yet so she thought 2 would be better than 1.

Dr Keller is exceptional. She is very compassionate and thorough. She takes into consideration the whole picture when coming up with a plan. She went over both mine and my husbands issues. She made sure you understood before you left her office. She gave options instead of trying to dictate every move. She is highly recommended.

Go see her sooner than you think you should. You will not be disappointed in her care.

She was very attentive and courteous and genuinely concerned about my success and my over all well being.

I had previously had two egg retrievals at a different place with poor results. I went to Dr Keller for a second opinion. My diagnosis was basically unexplained infertility. She gave me the option to try less expensive treatments with IUI plus clinic first because I have a strong family history of breast cancer and the less hormones the better for me. She said sometimes if it is an issues with egg quality the less you mess with the eggs the better off you are. IUI plus Clomid resulted in a pregnancy the 3rd try, however it was an ectopic pregnancy. After 3 more attempts she recommended IVF which we are currently planning to do soon. The last IUI I took Femara instead of Clomid she wanted to see if it might work better for me.

They are all very friendly, knowledgeable and attentive.

I am very pleased with the care they provide. I came here to get a second opinion and I am so glad I did. They are very compassionate and knowledgeable. They take all things into consideration when planning your course of treatment.

IUI 383 per cycle.

She has recommended two embryos (maximum) transfer when the time comes if possible.

She is concise, but explained my conditions in full detail, even provided drawings if that helped us understand why some things did/did not work. She always walks us through each procedure at least once, if not twice. She is thorough in understanding my body and our treatment. We are returning patients and she loves to hear about our son, who was conceived with her help. The first round we had some miscommunication that caused some confusion, but it was easily fixed and she made sure it did not happen again.

She will cover everything and she is very knowledgable in her field. If it doesn't make sense at first, ask questions and she will be happy to explain and help in any way she can.

Doctor Keller and her staff always treat us kindly. They are pleasant and personable. Our concerns/questions are addressed and discussed in a clear manner. Instructions are clear, given verbally and written. The only problem is reaching a person when we call. More often than not, we have to leave a message and the return call is not always convenient to take. I'm a teacher and am only available at certain times throughout the day, but feel like I have to take their call even in the middle of class because I'm not sure when I will be able to reach them again.

Because of my diagnosis we went straight to IVF treatments. I had other procedures, but do not recall exact names or reasons. I received hormones orally and injected. She adjusted my thyroid medicine as my blood work results were obtained. I had a fresh transfer which resulted in a chemical pregnancy and frozen transfer which resulted in a live birth. Because of my previous results, she is following the same course of treatment this round.

Everyone is compassionate and caring. They take the time to get to know you as a person and a patient. They are encouraging and never talk down to you if you have questions or concerns.

The initial visit took place at a different location than the rest of the appointments, treatments, and procedures which did not make much sense to me. Other than that, the facilities were welcoming and easy to navigate.

I am unsure about total clinic costs. Copays are $40 and my insurance has always covered 80% of expenses. I know the medication cost about $1,500.

Dr. Keller was very kind and compassionate while still being honest about our chances. We have unexplained infertility which is very frustrating and she did her best to balance between looking for answers to why we couldn’t get pregnant and getting pregnant itself. She let us decide how long we would spend doing diagnostics because she knew we didn’t want to wait too much longer to try to get pregnant. She spent as long as we needed during consultations to ensure we got all of our questions answered. She seemed genuinely thrilled for us when our embryo transfer was successful.

Be aware that you will not always see dr. Keller for all treatments.

Dr. Keller was very kind and patient in answering our numerous questions. She talked to us like peers, sharing stories about her own family which really put us at ease. She never talked down to us or forced a certain decision to be made. She shared options and expressed her thoughts on what might work best and allowed us to decide.

The nursing staff was helpful but not overly compassionate when things didn’t work (such as getting negative pregnancy tests during medicated cycles and during iui). They weren’t unfriendly but just weren’t overly warm. However, I did feel that it was easy to reach them and that I received prompt return calls if I had to leave a message. I also felt that the information they were relating was accurate and not confusing.

I did have long waits several times which can be frustrating when you work full time. I wasn’t very open with work so being gone long chunks of time without thorough explanation was tricky at times. Scheduling was relatively easy but availability was sometimes far into the future. Also, it is important to note thatWash U does rotation scheduling for procedures so you won’t necessarily see your doctor for IUIs, retrieval’s, transfers, etc. though I didn’t always see my doctor, I was happy with the other physician I saw (dr. Jungheim) that did my retrieval and transfer.

They were able to schedule early morning to avoid missing work which was great. I never waited more than 20ish minutes for these appts

We had insurance that covered some of our costs but I think for retrieval and transfer (not including meds) cash price was around 13k (without insurance)

We were told that because we had one embryo of good quality on day 5 and one that was lagging slightly behind, our best chances were to transfer both as this would increase our chances of getting pregnant. We were told if we did not transfer our embryo that was slightly behind, it would likely not make it to freeze so we decided to transfer both.

I loved having her for my doctor. We discussed everything that needed to be talked about. I had done some research on my own before our consultations and then asked questions throughout when they came up. When we did the iuis, the timing was off but that was probably partly because of how my cycles fell, usually over the weekends was when I would ovulate. They were all natural cycles because she wanted to keep things as close to natural as possible if we could. When they proved to not be working, we tried a medicated cycle and I overstimulated. I came in for an ultrasound and we decided to have another consultation. Over the phone, we discussed our next step, she thought I would respond well to the meds,which was ivf. We were able to start immediately and were both excited and nervous. There is more than just her when it comes to ivf. There are several doctors who work together and decided which methods and medicines should work best for each ivf patient. They all specialize in different areas and some overlap with other doctors but the made me feel better for choosing her.

Be open and ready to ask questions if you don't understand something. She will answer any question you have and won't judge you for it. Even if it seems small or silly. Ask anyway. She was able to answer my questions and provide the information I needed to make our decisions.

When we first met, she was very down to earth and easy to talk to. My husband liked her also which was a huge plus. She always knew my name when we came in and so did her staff. She took the time to explain a lot to us and took even our drive time to and from appointments into consideration for scheduling.

She knew just as much as Dr Keller did. Any question I had after the consultations, she could answer or get an answer for me and return my call. The nurses are trained to be able to answer those questions. They are a big part of the whole process and they are the ones you talk with the most during it.

They scheduled between 7:30 - 9:30 am. They would put you down in a time slot but if you happen to show up a little early they were usually pretty good about getting you in early if not right one time. There usually wasnt much waiting when they scheduled you like this. There were several utlrasound techs and several ultrasound rooms. Different times during the day were for different types of appointments.

She was sincere, helpful and understanding. I could not recommend her more. We had issues at retrieval resulting in my eggs having to be frozen and we were not able to do a fresh transfer. She did everything she could to make a hard experience more comfortable.

Enjoy the tough experience of infertility with her. She is patient and understanding.

She took time to explain everything to me and made me feel comfortable.

I don't remember them to be honest. The day is a blur with everything that happened.

Denice could not be a better person or nurse. She is amazingly compassionate and quick to respond to any needs I have.

The clinic is great. Low wait times, great staff and an inviting atmosphere. Everyone takes the time to listen, understand your needs and is interested in knowing who you are as a person. They are always their to listen to you as a patient and look for ways to assist your needs as soon as possible.

My insurance covered a lot but it has a capped limit. I know I am close to have spent 25,000 in procedures alone and 9,700 in meds.

There was no strong preference.

Dr. Keller is warm and compassionate, she talks to us and not at us. She lets us know exactly what to expect each visit. She is also very thorough and detail oriented. You can tell she really wants you to succeed.

Ask questions, don't worry if you think they are "dumb", the doctor is happy to answer all question and make sure you are well informed. No question is a dumb question.

She and her staff truly care about me/my husband and our success.

We are doing are on our first official cycle. I will be starting injections at the end of April and hopefully by the end of may we will be doing the transfer of embryos

Amy is very detail oriented and is there to answer any additional questions we have. If we call and she has to call us back she is very prompt and ready with the answers.

So far the clinic has been amazing. They are thorough and make sure we are right on track. They provide a class for anyone going through IVF to let them know in detail what to expect with their cycles. Two thumbs up to the clinic. They are amazing!

Not sure.

Dr. Keller successfully got me pregnant and was a compassionate Doctor. Her nursing staff was also great!

Utilize the patient portal, that is the fastest way to get a response

The tone in the way that the staff and dr. Keller talked to me showed that they had true compassion.