American Humerist Evan Esar once wrote this about statistics-

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

SART has updated their stats with the 2011 data. The organization includes more than 375 member practices, representing more than 85 percent of the ART clinics in our country.

The numbers that we find interesting are:

The Live birth rate. Not the Pregnancy Rate.

Pregnancy rate is great but chemicals can be included in that. The live birth rate seems to be much more telling.

The Percentage of Transfers resulting in a live birth is a good stat too. As a patient, it is good to know that if I make it to transfer, what are my odds for my age group to bring home a baby.

The Average Number of Embryos Transferred. It bothers us to see that in the youngest age group some clinics are transferring more than 2 embryos routinely. This shouldn’t be necessary or happening on average for the youngest age group. If clinic A averages 1.7 embryos at transfer and clinic B 2.5 embryos for the youngest age group, Clinic A is the better option.

Frozen Embryo Cycle data

FETs are huge and it says a lot about the clinic’s standards for freezing and how well they culture embryos. Please do not freeze something that will not make the thaw – that shouldn’t happen at all in this day and age and do not quote me lesser odds because it is a FET. If you aren’t using vitrification, get with the program. FET success rates may actually be better than fresh without all of the hormones in our bodies. Please stop freezing morulas. Give the embryo until day 6 to become a blast and then freeze at blastocyst stage. If it doesn’t make it to blast by day 6, it’s not going to make a baby- I know it, you know it, the embryologist knows it, everyone knows it. Don’t make me go through a FET cycle to prove it.

So, great late night reading for us all. Well done for those that are leading the way and roll on 2013!