After three years of running this site, we have fielded dozens of questions about IVF Success Rates. Here are some of the most popular ones. Have a question that isn't here? You can ask it in the comments section and we will do our best to get it answered.

Why are the most recent published success rates on SART two years old and on CDC three years old?

IVF success rates are based on live births and counted in the year the IVF cycle was started not the year of birth. For example, if a woman had a successful IVF cycle in December, SART gets the IVF success data from fertility clinics at the end of the following year, and counts that woman's baby as a successful IVF case for the previous year. Because of popular demand, SART started to publish this data on their website a few years ago. However, the SART data is not verified by any third party agency. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and other Government offices take about 12 months to verify, analyze and compile the data and publish the verified fertility success rates in the first quarter of the new year in the ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) section of the CDC's website. The CDC is three years old at the time it is published.

Why do you compare the life birth rates than pregnancy or implantation rates?

As an example, in 2005 there were 97,442 IVF cycles using fresh embryos across all age groups. Of those cycles, 34% got pregnant, but only 28% carried the baby to term and gave birth. That's a big difference! This site was built for IVF patients. Most of them want to know the chance of taking home a baby.

IVF doctors like to present you success rates based on pregnancies or even implantation rate. Pregnancy rates are based on a positive pregnancy test result in the first trimester. Implantation rates don't even factor in a pregnancy test. Both Implantation Rate and Pregnancy rate are going to be higher than the Live Birth Rate, that's why doctor's quote them so much. You, as a patient, however, want a baby. So we rate the clinics compared to Life Birth Rate.

Why do SART and CDC make it difficult to compare IVF success rates?

Good question. We have a separate post about that controversial rule here.

Still have unanswered questions about IVF success rate data? Great! Post them in the questions and we will do our best to get you an answer.

Tags: FAQ, patient education

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 10:06 am and is filed under Fertility Success Rates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.