IVF success rate should be measured by take home baby rate which is usually 30 to 35 percent globally.
It is disheartening to see such a low success rates despite such controlled and precise procedures at every step of IVF.
The reason the low success rate is that by giving hormones in high dose we make even those eggs grow which otherwise would have perished in a normal cycle. These eggs are usually not the healthiest of the lot and thus lead to chromosomally abnormal embryos. Nature tries to prevent implantation of such abnormal embryos leading to low rate of conception. Even if conceived these pregnancies end up in miscarriage or need a termination of pregnancy if detected abnormal during the ante natal period.The ectopic pregnancy rate is also slightly high in IVF conceived pregnancy.
As a rule of thumb, the single most common reason of IVF success is the maternal age.
Thus donor IVF cycles have better success rates than self IVF as the mean age of donors is less than the women who opt for self egg IVF.
Other methods of improving success rate is probably to subject the embryos to PGS which helps in detecting embryos with chromosomal abnormality and thus helping in choose only healthy embryos for embryo transfers or for freezing for future use.Testing endometrium receptivity using ERA might be of limited value in increasing the success rate and can be considered in case of recurrent IVF failures despite good quality embryos.
Our success rate is 27 percent which is comparable with international standards.
