IVF Success Rates
The IVF Success Rate Odds
Special IVF Treatment Plan
Boost your chances of success and control costs with this special IVF treatment
plan.
When a couple enters a fertility clinic, what are the odds that they will someday
take home a real, live, gurgling baby? Because each couple is unique, the answer
depends on several factors: the woman's body, the man's body, the clinic's success
rate, and luck.
Physiological Factors
No matter how good a fertility clinic is, some couples will never have a
biological child. On the other hand, many couples become parents before treatment
starts. Some factors are known to improve the likelihood of pregnancy, while
others decrease it.
Clinic IVF Success Rates
The experience and quality of different clinics can vary. So can the method of
reporting success rates.
Comparing Clinic IVF Success Rates
The Centers for Disease Control collects IVF success rate data from
fertility clinics across the U.S. The statistics can help you compare
different clinics. However, it's important to understand how to interpret
the statistics, and we provide more details on this below. The CDC's Web
site also explains how to read a fertility clinic statistic table.
Physiological Factors for Success
The factors that affect the probability of achieving pregnancy and carrying a baby
to term are largely physiological. Consider your own conditions when looking at
clinic success rates for any procedure. If you have many of the positive factors
on your side and no negative factors, your probability is on the high end.
Negative factors reduce the likelihood of pregnancy.
Positive factors:
- Younger age of woman (age is not relevant with donor egg services)
- Previous pregnancy with this partner
- Non-smoker
Negative factors:
- Age - the older a woman is, the less likely she will become pregnant (age is not
relevant with donor egg services)
- History of recurrent miscarriage
- Both male and female partner infertility
- Previous history of assisted reproduction (3 or more cycles) without success
- Uterine abnormality (DES, fibroids)
- Certain types of ovarian dysfunction (High FSH level)
- Hydrosalpinx - an excessive dilation and fluid accumulation in the fallopian tube.
Clinic IVF Success Rates
Measuring Clinic Success Rates
Fertility clinics use several different ways to measure success, depending on the
stage of the procedure that the couple reaches. Because of the differences, these
published success rates can be misunderstood and misleading when used to compare
clinics or to understand your odds of conceiving. You can get a better picture of
a clinic's success by examining the pregnancy rates for all three stages of
treatment.
Even these statistics do not tell you what you really want to know—the number of
women who ultimately take home a baby based on the number of women who start
treatment. Ask for the delivery rate per embryo transfer (counting twins,
triplets, and other multiple-births as one delivery) to get an idea of the true
success rate of the clinic. Ask whether the statistics refer to cumulative cycle
data or current cycle data. Always ask for documentation and a breakdown of the
data by age and diagnosis, so that you can compare the statistics to your own
situation.
The third column in the table gives an example of the different success rates that
a clinic would report for each measurement. See the explanation below.
| Measurement |
Calculation |
Example |
| Clinical
Pregnancy rate per cycle initiation |
Total
pregnancies/
Number of women who start ART treatment |
15%
(15/100) |
| Clinical
pregnancy rate per retrieval |
Total
pregnancies/
Number of women who have eggs retrieved |
19%
(15/80) |
| Clinical
pregnancy rate per transfer |
Total
pregnancies /
Number of women who have an embryo transfer |
25%
(15/60) |
| Delivery
rate per transfer |
Total deliveries
/
Number of women who have an embryo transfer
|
16% (10/60)
|
Example and Explanation
Let’s take an example of a clinic that initiated 100 cycles - they started 100 women
on an ART procedure by prescribing fertility hormones to stimulate multiple egg
production. Some women will be counted in more than one cycle.
Of those women, 20 responded poorly to the fertility drugs and ended the cycle,
and 80 responded well and proceeded to egg retrieval. In a retrieval, the
physician removes eggs from the woman’s ovaries. Physicians will cancel some
cycles before retrieval--usually this is because the woman responds poorly to
fertility drugs and does not develop enough eggs.
Of the 80 egg retrievals, 20 women did not have enough eggs fertilize and develop
properly into embryos for an embryo transfer. The transfer is the final IVF
treatment stage, in which the physician transfers embryos into the woman's uterus.
In other ART procedures, the physician may transfer unfertilized eggs and sperm
(GIFT) or embryos (ZIFT) into the fallopian tubes.
Of the 60 women who did have an embryo transfer, 15 became pregnant.
Of those same 60 women, 5 lost the pregnancies to miscarriage or other problems,
and 10 gave birth.
Therefore, the percentage of women who took home babies after starting an ART
cycle (for this fictitious sample clinic) is 10%.
Comparing Clinic IVF Success Rates
A program's success rate depends upon the quality of its laboratory,
practitioners, and staff. It also depends on factors beyond the program's control,
such as physiological factors that include the age of the patients and the cause
of infertility.
Evaluating a clinic's success with hormone treatments and surgery is difficult
because of the unique conditions and treatment of each patient and the lack of
standardized data collection.
You can compare Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) services by examining each
clinic's statistical data. Be sure to compare similar statistics, since fertility
clinics calculate success rates in different ways.
CDC Statistics
Most U.S. fertility clinics report success rate information to the Centers
for Disease Control. The CDC then publishes this comprehensive,
clinic-specific data. Results are organized by state and by procedure. The
data includes information on pregnancy outcomes, such as the rate of
miscarriages, twins, and other multiple births. The current CDC report is
for 2002 success rates. The CDC also includes an explanation of how to read
a fertility clinic statistic table.
Check CDC reports for each fertility program that you are considering. Also,
check reports from previous years to see how the data changed over time.
Year-to-year data can reveal information on the quality, stability, and
experience of the clinic. Ask each clinic to quote their most recent
statistics for your age and diagnosis based on delivery rate per embryo
transfer.
Which ART?
The ART procedures that a clinic uses may reveal more information about its
experience. Recent studies have shown that IVF can be as successful as the
theoretically superior, but more invasive procedures of GIFT and ZIFT. These
studies support the idea that excellent embryology laboratories can have pregnancy
rates for IVF equal to or better than those for GIFT and ZIFT. Laboratories that
can maintain high success rates with IVF will usually choose it over GIFT and ZIFT
procedures.
Special IVF Treatment Plan
Boost your chances of success and control costs with this special IVF treatment
plan.