The Success Rates of Assisted Conception - Part II

When considering your chances of success, you need to look carefully at what is meant by it, and what is used as the baseline for measurement. There are many different stages of IVF treatment, and each one has its own success rate. The success rate per treatment cycle will be much lower than per embryo transfer - because for so many couples the early stages of treatment do not work. Up to a quarter who start treatment may not even reach the stage where the woman has an embryo transferred back into her womb.

Frequently success rates are given in terms of pregnancies. But this can be seriously misleading, as many pregnancies will not continue through to the birth of a child. Pregnancies may be biochemical only: the woman may have a positive test, but there may be no sign of pregnancy on an ultrasound scan and she then bleeds. In addition, the high level of monitoring of women during IVF treatment will pick up a pregnancy at a very early stage. In nature, many are not viable and are lost at such an early stage that the woman might not ever realise that she was pregnant. For these reasons the more cautious clinics will only chalk up a success where the woman has not only had two positive tests, but where a foetal heartbeat has been detected by ultrasound, confirming a clinical pregnancy.

The second measure of success is the live-birth rate, often called the take-home baby rate. It's important to look at this because it shows the chances of the desired end result - going home from hospital with your own baby. The live-birth rate is lower than the pregnancy rate. Unfortunately, even once the diagnosis is assured, IVF has a high level of what is euphemistically called pregnancy wastage - what most women would call miscarriage. Whether this is higher than for naturally conceived pregnancies is a matter of debate. Sometimes it can be hard to get an accurate live-birth rate. Clinics may not know the ultimate outcome of a confirmed pregnancy, while others may be reluctant to take responsibility for mistakes made by others during antenatal care or childbirth.

Shirley M. Duran is a mother of two and an author of a variety of related lifestyle issues and topics with which has helped hundreds of mothers become pregnant. If you have any pregnancy questions for which you need answers, it is recommended to visit: http://mypregnancyquestions.info/

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