Thursday, May 26, 2016

Deciphering IVF Success Rates

When a patient is confronted with needing IVF one of the first things that they think about is finding a Michigan fertility center that has the highest IVF success rates in Michigan. Who wouldn’t want to go to the best clinic, right? When reviewing IVF success rates there are a few guidelines that can help you understand and interpret this information.

First, look for the clinic that you have a feeling of interest in and make sure their success rates are published on either the Society for the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) websites or Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART.) These organizations supervise fertility clinics and ensure they are reporting birth outcomes. If a center is not listed on either website that is a big indicator that something could be amiss. You should definitely ask why their success rates are not listed.

After you have found the fertility centers success rates that you are interested in, you may be wondering, where are this year’s success rates? The most recent IVF success rates will always be published two years later. For example, the success rates that were published in 2016 were actually from 2014. Why? You ask. Since these figures are based on live births you have to give time for fertility centers to acquire the birth stats, collect the data, turn it into SART or the CDC and have them reviewed and approved.

How many IVF cycles the clinic performed is one of the first things to look at. You may not see a total number of cycles listed on the report but you will see the number of cycles done under each age category. Why are how many cycles the clinic performed significant? For some people they want to go to a center where they perform a lot of IVF. For those individuals, it may indicate the experience of a fertility clinic or their physicians. The number of cycles a fertility clinic performs can also affect their success rates. For example, take a fertility center that does 12 IVF cycles in women younger than 35. If eight of them get pregnant and have a live birth that gives them a success rate of 67%, which is well above the national average. Now take a clinic that does 125 cycles in the same age category and their success rate is 50%, which is also above the national average but much lower than the clinic that did 12 cycles. Does that mean that the clinic performing 125 cycles is not as good as than the clinic that performed 12? It depends how you look at it. Clearly, a clinic that does well over a hundred more IVF cycles are going to have to get a lot more women pregnant than the center that does 12 to increase their success rate.

The majority of people who want to have a baby want just one baby. That brings up another statistic that you will want to look at, multiple rates. You will want to know what your chances are of having twins or triplets or more at a particular center. For each age category, it will tell you this information. Something that can affect multiple rates is how many embryos on average the fertility center is putting back. If the average number of embryos is higher than another clinic, that may increase the chances of multiples.

  If for any reason you don’t understand the success rate information bring it up to your physician. He or she should be able to explain their rates to you.

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