Success Rates

The Institute for Reproductive Health has helped thousands of couples to succeed in achieving their dream of parenting over the years. Many factors affect success rates. The two major factors are the severity of the disease process and the quality of the treatment.

Some treatments offer modest results. These include Clomid and insemination with conception rates of 10-15% per cycle. Injectable medications such as Gonal F or Follistim coupled with insemination offer superior pregnancy rates but with poor control over multiple births.   In Vitro Fertilization offers the highest conception rates with the lowest rate of multiple births.

Individual success rates for IVF vary depending on age of the egg and severity of the disease process. A 32-year-old woman would be expected to have a higher conception rate than a 42-year-old one. Conception using a donated egg for the 42-year-old individual would give her the same conception rate as the 32-year-old individual.  Age affects the ovaries much more than the uterus.

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) advises against comparing clinics on a purely statistical basis since some clinics treat more difficult cases and others treat easier cases to improve the appearance of their statistics. One common technique to eliminate difficult cases is to screen based on AMH and reject cases with poor value. IRH does not discriminate against patients based on AMH levels.

IRH reports its IVF data yearly to SART and the CDC. Remember that a December IVF cycle’s outcome may not be known till late the following year and thus the data lags by one to two years. 

Our most recent IVF data reported nationally can be found at SART DATA

Making Sense of ART Statistics

What are your odds of getting pregnant from a given procedure such as IVF or a frozen embryo transfer? The question is easy, but the answer is complicated. It is useful to know that the data for IVF is nationally reported and compiled annually. The data is reported by better programs to SART.  Reporting to SART is expensive and time consuming.  IRH reports all its IVF data to SART.  The intent of this report is to give the public accurate information about what their odds of success are with a given procedure such as IVF in a specific program.

A common statistic is clinical pregnancy per retrieval. This is the chance of having a pregnancy that can be seen on ultrasound following egg retrieval. Some of these pregnancies will not result in live birth.  Live birth rate per retrieval is also available. 

In addition to raw statistics about success rate per retrieval, it’s important to look at the number of cycles the clinic performs. A clinic performing a high number of cycles is more likely to have specific expertise in IVF. Also, it’s unlikely that the clinic is selecting a high number of easy cycles to perform. It’s also important to look at the multiple pregnancy rates. A better clinic should have good clinical pregnancy rates per retrieval but have multiple pregnancy rates that are as good or less than the national average. Particularly the number of pregnancies more than twins should be quite low. Also look at the average number of embryos that are transferred. Better clinics should be transferring a single embryo in most cases.  Multiple births increase pregnancy risks and ideally should be kept to a minimum.

Pregnancy rate per embryo transfer is also broken out.  This will depend on whether the embryo is genetically tested or not (PGT).  Genetic testing will increase the pregnancy rate per embryo transfer but will not increase the pregnancy rate per egg retrieval.  

Another quality statistic is whether the clinic offers a money back guarantee. The money back guarantee should be guarantee of live birth. It’s unlikely that a clinic with poor success rates would offer this program. IRH has a money back program.  You may want to look at regional clinics in the area and compare some aspects of volume as well as pregnancy statistics. This should give you a general idea of the size and success of the program. Factors commonly known to affect pregnancy rate include age as well as ovarian reserve. Ovarian reserve is best estimated by looking at the AMH level. It’s also important to discuss the chances of success for your particular procedure at a specific program with the staff. Ultimately your chance of live birth will depend on how difficult your case is and the quality of the program.

IVF data are compiled annually and reported at www.sart.org, and https://www.cdc.gov/art/success-rates/index.html