You would think as a fertile person electing to use IVF for family balancing that it would be a near 100% guarantee, right? We like to say proven fertility trumps poor pretesting around here but there are 4 factors that all contribute to your success or failure with IVF-
1. Age
Age is the number one factor to consider when evaluating your odds of IVF working for you. Many of us turn to IVF/PGD for family balancing in our 30’s and the later you decide to pursue this option, the more difficult it is. The 2012 National Statistics for all IVF patients according to www.SART.org are-
|
Age |
<35 |
35-37 |
38-40 |
41-42 |
>42 |
|
Percentage of cycles resulting in live births |
40.6 |
31.3 |
22.2 |
11.7 |
3.9 |
You can see that as you move up in the age brackets, numbers decline rapidly. Obviously, these numbers are mostly comprised of infertility patients and there are no statistics kept on PGD tested embryos so it is difficult to say with any accuracy what your odds may be when using IVF electively.
Age plays a big role in outcome from what we have seen over the years in our community forum. The younger you are, the higher your odds of success. Age is part of the equation but age can also be deceiving because we have also learned some people’s bodies are just not designed for IVF.
2. Pretesting
Pretesting is the assessment of your ovarian reserve- how many potential eggs can you make and what is the best guess at what their quality may be. Pretesting is what we refer to a battery of tests that your doctor orders before you start the IVF process. Tests include day 3 FSH level, AMH, and antral follicle count to name a few of the key indicators of success.
Fertile women can have very poor pretesting. We have seen that time and time again in our Community Forum. It is not atypical for a 33 year old woman with 3 kids to have poor pretesting. When that happens, you chances of success are lower and a higher than normal amount of medication will be used to get a response from your ovaries. IVF has nothing to do with our natural fertility. All your body needs to do each month is give you one good egg. Our bodies are designed to do this for us and is usually very good at it. Gender Selection with IVF is a numbers game- you potentially lose half of your embryos due to gender so you need some numbers to work with. If you are one of the potential poor responders, this can be very upsetting and discouraging but not impossible to overcome.
3. Clinic
Your choice of clinic plays a key role in your chances of success. In the US, clinics report to the CDC and www.SART.org with their outcomes and choosing a clinic with a good success rate it paramount. The best way we have found to do this level of comparison is to look at the following data points from SART-
- 1. The Live birth rate for the <35 age group. This age group has the highest chance of success because of their age so as a fertile woman, no matter what your age bracket it, look at this column when evaluating clinics. The National Average is 40.6%. Ideally, your clinic should have a number at least equal if not higher than the National Average.
- 2. Number of embryos transferred to arrive at that number- Ideally, you want to only transfer ONE embryo when you cycle. As gender selection patients, we typically use 24-chromosome testing so there is less need to transfer more than one embryo at a time and we are not infertility patients. Ideally, you want a clinic that averages under 2 embryos per transfer but if you see closer to 3 embryos being transferred to arrive at the live birth rate, that is not a good quality of that clinic. The fewer embryos transferred to arrive at the live birth rate, the better.
- 3. Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) live birth rates according to SART-
|
Age |
<35 |
35-37 |
38-40 |
41-42 |
>42 |
|
Percentage of cycles resulting in live births |
42.4 |
39.8 |
33.9 |
26.4 |
17.8 |
Interestingly, the FET rates are higher than the fresh transfer rates. Make sure your clinic uses vitrification as the freezing technique for best results and has a FET live birth rate equal or higher than the national averages.
There are other factors to consider when selecting a clinic such as the type of PGD testing they offer. More information can be found in our community forum on this topic.
4. Donor Embryo rates
The National Average for a fresh transfer using donor eggs is 56.6%. This number is perhaps the best representation of what one can hope for when using IVF as a tool for Gender Selection as a fertile person. Donor eggs come from young, fertile women. Egg quality is superb in this population and this number is a guide as to both how successful IVF can be and also how difficult IVF is. As you can see, the success rate is just over 50%. When using donor eggs, you are essentially guaranteed to have a transfer. When you do get a transfer, the odds are better than 50/50 of taking home a baby. This BEST describes IVF/PGD for Gender Selection. Getting to transfer is the hard part. Having enough embryos to make it through testing and end up with 1 or 2 of your desired gender on day 5, transfer day, is critical and sometimes proves difficult. A No Transfer situation is possible with IVF/PGD for gender selection due to no embryos available of your desired gender. It can happen. So, that fact alone lowers our odds of IVF working for us. Sometimes your best embryos are the gender that is already represented in your family. For that reason alone, IVF for gender selection is never a guarantee and sometimes depending on your age, pretesting and choice of clinic, far from it.
Need help locating a clinic? Try our location services located in our Community Forum! Although registration in the forum is free, you must become a Dream Member to utilize our Clinic Location Service.