What are your chances of success with fertility treatments?

Many fertility clinics offer their fertility success rates to patients looking for this type of treatments. Any patient would choose the clinic with the highest numbers, but are you sure you know how to read those numbers? What does 80% success rate with IVF really means?  Are you looking at the clinic's success rates overall or at those related to a specific age or maybe procedure or maybe the number of healthy babies born?

As you can see there are many questions that you should ask to be sure that you completely understand what the given numbers really show.  Before comparing success rates make sure that the numbers have been verified by an independent association or organization such as the The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority in the UK or the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology in the US.

Overall, success rates show the number of treatments carried out by the clinic in a particular year and the number of  pregnancies or live births that were born as a result. Some of the more popular ways to measure success rates are live birth rates or clinical pregnancy per treatment cycles, per implantation rate, per egg collected or per embryo transfer.

If you already know what fertility treatment or treatments you need, than you can look at the success rates for that specific procedure. Keep in mind that some procedures are easier to perform and with a higher success rate compared to others. For example clinics who perform IVF on younger women, will have better success rates compared with those who have as patients women over 40 years old with one or several miscarriages and a longer period of infertility.

Another example are clinics which have a high IVF success rate, which does mean that the pregnancy was successfully carried to the term. The best thing to do is to ask for data specific to your age, medical condition and treatment you need.

Read more at: http://www.placidway.com/article/1781/What-are-your-chances-of-success-with-fertility-treatments