Couples choosing infertility clinics to initiate their treatment should understand the success rates quoted by various health care facilities. A high quality infertility treatment program is one which presents a higher success rate over a consistent period. An established infertility clinic should be forthcoming about discussing its success rates. However, understanding success rate figures can be somewhat demanding.
Understand Live Births
The success by most infertility clinics is quoted in terms of the number of live births. For instance, in IVF treatment, success rate is often expressed as the percentage in terms of live births per egg retrieval procedure. Thus, if an infertility clinic presents an IVF live birth rate of 50 percent, it suggests that pregnancy is established and a child is born for half of all IVF procedures undertaken by the clinic. Egg retrieval is quoted to signify the accuracy of the procedure.
The fertilization of eggs in artificial conditions often leads to clinical mishaps. Here, the embryo or the oocyte is damaged. This creates the need for more egg retrievals. A success rate of 50 percent per egg retrieval means that of all the eggs extracted from the IVF female, live birth is accomplished in half of all the cases. Fewer egg retrieval cycles means lower treatment costs and reduced IVF treatment duration.
Credible Sources For Finding Success Rates
If you are concerned about the authenticity of data being put forth by an infertility clinic, it is advised to seek credible resources of information. A highly recommended source is the website maintained by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It is responsible for publishing IVF success rates for most reputed infertility clinics on an annual basis. The information displayed here is the most comprehensive and includes a wide range of data, including fertility problems for which treatment was sought, age of patients seeking treatment, number of implanted embryos and kind of births (single or multiple).
Another credible resource is the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART). Its website provides very comprehensive information. SART reports detailed statistics including sub-procedures like egg donation involved in the infertility treatment. This site can also be used to find reputed infertility clinics across the United States through location-based online tools.
Choosing Between CDC and SART
The data presented on these sites is usually of the preceding year(s). All infertility clinics are not mandated to report their success rates to SART by government rules. However, they are expected to send detailed reports to the CDC. Thus, the CDC data is usually regarded as more comprehensive and accurate. CDC even reports some clinics as "non-reporting clinics," in which the clinic is found guilty of not reporting its success rate data as per the published guidelines.
Understand Success Rate Variations
Factors than can affect the success rate include:
- Quality of facilities at the infertility clinic
- Expertise of the clinical staff
- Nature of infertility—some couples are regarded as low-yield patients, i.e. quality of sperm or eggs or both is highly detrimental to establishing pregnancy in the first attempt
Success rates can often vary (i.e., be lower than expected) because of reasons that don't necessarily mean a detrimental quality of treatment. For instance, IVF treatment involves the option of many sub-procedures. As an example, using Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) is likely to dent the success rate to some extent rather than non-ICSI IVF treatments. Similarly, success rates are usually a bit higher for fresh embryos rather than frozen embryos. Women above the age of 35 tend to have lower success rates during popular infertility treatments like IVF, and these patterns have a nationwide prevalence.
