Success
What are my chances of achieving a pregnancy from treatment?
One of the most frequent questions we are asked by anyone considering assisted conception is ‘what are my chances of achieving a pregnancy?’ This is often a difficult question to answer as your chances of becoming pregnant will depend on a number of factors, such as how old you are, what kind of fertility problem you have and which type of treatment you need. Each individual will be slightly different and couples may have a combination of factors affecting their probability of conceiving making it difficult to provide an exact figure for any individual.
Clinics may express their pregnancy rates in different ways and this can be confusing. Some clinics will count all positive pregnancy tests in their figures. However, some pregnancies may miscarry at a very early stage or be ectopic pregnancies. Other clinics may present pregnancy rates based on results per cycle started, per egg collection or embryo transfer. We believe that the best way to express pregnancy rates is by expressing the number of treatment cycles that actually result in a live birth as a percentage of all the cycles started. This is the method recommended by the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority).
On this page we have given the figure for our live birth rate per cycle started. This means the chance of achieving a live birth from each cycle that you start. This also therefore includes any cycles that have been started and then cancelled.
The more recent figures can only be expressed as the chance of achieving a clinical pregnancy. This means when a baby’s heartbeat is seen on a scan. The majority of treatment cycles resulting in a clinical pregnancy will result in the birth of a baby.
Live birth rate per cycle started 2004 (%)
| Treatment |
Less than
35 years (%) |
Between
35 & 38 (%) |
38 & above % |
| IVF / ICSI |
29.1 |
18.3 |
11.7 |
| DI |
39.1 |
8.9 |
7.7 |
| Frozen embryo replacements including those with donated eggs |
35.8 |
17.9 |
5.7 |
Live birth rate per cycle started 2005 (%)
| Treatment |
Less than
35 years (%) |
Between
35 & 38 (%) |
38 & above % |
| IVF / ICSI |
29.7 |
26.1 |
14.7 |
| DI |
25.5 |
12.9 |
- |
| Frozen embryo replacements including those with donated eggs |
30.4 |
30.8 |
35.3 |
What are the risks of a multiple pregnancy?
We take the issues and the higher risks of multiple pregnancies very seriously and have a policy of replacing two embryos at embryo transfer in IVF cycles.
Our multiple pregnancy rate for IVF for 2002 was 16.6% and we had no triplet births.
HFEA Datasheet: click here
