Banafsheh (Bana) Kashani, MD, FACOG

About

Dr. Banafsheh (Bana) Kashani is a double board-certified reproductive endocrinologist running a solo fertility and IVF practice in Aliso Viejo, California. She has been treating infertility patients since 2014, has practiced in Orange County since 2017, and opened her own independent clinic in 2020 specifically to keep the personal, one-on-one dynamic that bigger programs tend to lose. Her practice is now affiliated with South Coast Fertility Specialists, and she continues to see patients from the Pacific Park Drive suite.

Dr. Kashani graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from UC Irvine, earned her MD from the University of South Alabama College of Medicine as the top of her class, completed her Obstetrics & Gynecology residency at the University of Southern California (where she was named Daniel R. Mishell Resident of the Year and served as Administrative Chief Resident at LAC+USC Medical Center), and finished a Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility fellowship at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. Before opening her own practice she trained and worked at Kaiser Permanente Orange County and Eden Centers for Advanced Fertility in Newport Beach.

Her published research focuses on endometrium and implantation, medical management of fibroids and their effect on fertility, fertility preservation, and fertility in patients with PCOS and Turner syndrome. She contributed to a large SART-CORS analysis of frozen embryo transfer trends. She is also a frequent expert guest on podcasts and national media, covering topics from “Does stress cause infertility?” to first-time-parent questions. She consults in English, Farsi, and Spanish.

Clinical Expertise

• IVF (In Vitro Fertilization): full-cycle management from protocol design through ovarian stimulation, monitoring, egg retrieval, and embryo transfer. Stimulation, retrieval, and transfer are performed personally by Dr. Kashani; embryo culture and ICSI happen at an affiliated embryology laboratory.
• Reciprocal IVF: family-building IVF for female same-sex couples in which one partner provides the eggs and the other carries the pregnancy; the practice coordinates both partners’ cycles and the legal parentage documentation under California’s Family Code.
• Donor-Oocyte IVF: IVF cycles using donor eggs, including donor matching, cycle synchronization, and legal documentation of parentage.
• IUI (Intrauterine Insemination): partner-sperm and donor-sperm insemination for ovulatory, unexplained, and mild male-factor infertility, and for single patients building families with donor sperm.
• Egg Freezing / Oocyte Cryopreservation: elective fertility preservation as well as medical indications such as pre-oncology treatment.
• Ovulation Induction and PCOS Management: letrozole and clomiphene protocols with ultrasound monitoring, lifestyle coaching, and staged escalation — patients who can conceive without IVF are not pushed into IVF.
• Gestational Carrier Coordination: medical cycle management for intended parents working with a gestational carrier, coordinated with a family-law attorney familiar with California Family Code §§ 7960-7962.
• Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Evaluation and Gynecologic Management: PCOS, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, uterine adhesions, polyps, abnormal uterine bleeding, irregular cycles.

Why Choose Dr. Kashani

Double board-certified, Ob/Gyn and REI. Because she’s certified by ABOG in both Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility, Dr. Kashani is not just a cycle manager — she can identify and treat the underlying gynecologic conditions that show up inside a fertility workup, and she doesn’t have to hand off every fibroid, endometriosis case, or bleeding abnormality to a generalist.

A solo practice, deliberately. She opened the Aliso Viejo clinic to keep the ratio of physician-to-patient time high. That means the person who wrote your stimulation protocol is the same person checking your follicles in the morning, calling in dose changes, doing your retrieval, and doing your transfer. If a big-clinic model has left you feeling like one number in a queue, this is the counter-example.

Orange County native, Orange County practitioner. Dr. Kashani grew up here and has practiced in the county since 2017. That’s an underrated clinical asset: she knows which local OB practices accept fertility patients, which anesthesia teams are comfortable with IVF sedation cases, and which specialty referrals make sense for a specific situation.

Peer-recognized teaching and leadership. Her résumé of awards is unusually dense for a solo-practice physician: USC Resident of the Year, ACOG Gibbons Award, Endocrine Society Clinical Fellows Award in Women’s Health, Administrative Chief Resident at LAC+USC, Best in Leadership, Nurses Choice Award, and the “Physician Selected by Peers to Be Their Personal Physician” recognition. The last one, in particular, is a signal about how other doctors feel about working with her.

Research-practice bridge on implantation and endometrium. Her published work sits close to the day-to-day questions she answers for patients — implantation failure, frozen-transfer trends, medical management of fibroids before a cycle. Patients with a history of failed transfers or thin lining benefit from a physician who reads that literature as part of her own research program, not just secondhand.

Multilingual visits. She consults in English, Farsi, and Spanish. For patients for whom a medical conversation in a second language is a real burden, that removes a meaningful obstacle to informed decision-making.

Professional Affiliations

Dr. Kashani is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (FACOG) and holds Diplomate status with the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) in both Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility. She is an active member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the Pacific Coast Reproductive Society (PCRS), and the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (SREI). She contributes to national fertility-education media as an expert voice and has participated in the SART-CORS research network’s studies of frozen embryo transfer trends.

Suitable For

Women 38 and older planning IVF. Dr. Kashani has a substantial patient mix in the older maternal-age range and designs protocols accordingly — with realistic expectations around ovarian reserve, and a preference for individualized dosing rather than a one-protocol-fits-all approach.

PCOS and ovulatory infertility. Patients with PCOS who haven’t tried a stepped approach (lifestyle, letrozole, gonadotropins, timed IUI) before going straight to IVF will find a physician willing to walk the ladder. Not every PCOS patient needs IVF.

Recurrent pregnancy loss. Structured workup that includes endometrial evaluation, genetic and anatomic causes, and specialist coordination — with attention to conditions like endometriosis that standard panels can miss.

Endometriosis. Patients who need a physician comfortable managing endometriosis medically alongside a fertility plan, or who want to consider whether a stage of surgical referral is worth it before spending an IVF cycle.

Elective or medical egg freezing. For patients pausing family-building for career, medical, or partner-timing reasons, or cancer patients who need to bank eggs before gonadotoxic therapy.

Reciprocal IVF and donor-sperm IUI for female same-sex couples. The practice explicitly supports family-building paths for LGBTQ+ patients, and California’s Family Code framework makes parentage documentation straightforward for both partners.

Anyone who wants the solo-practice model over a large-clinic pipeline. If your main anxiety is “will I actually talk to the doctor who does my retrieval,” a solo practice is a structural answer to that question.