How to Find IVF success rates for US IVF Centers
Originally posted by Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh On September - 3 - 2010
The first step in any plan to create your family using an egg donor or gestational carrier is always to find a fertility clinic and/or doctor that suits you. Some intended parents look to a large hospital practice, others prefer the more hands-on approach that a smaller fertility center might provide. Before choosing your clinic, it’s a good idea to compare success rates.
There are two ways to access IVF success rates in this country, both of which are published each year.
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The CDC’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Fertility Clinic Success Rates provides a summary of IVF cycles performed in the United States. You can even read about success rates by state and by clinic. The site is updated yearly, and the most current report will be from two years previously.
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The second source of IVF success rates are from SART, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. This report contains the same outcome data as the CDC report but is released a year sooner.
This report contains the same outcome data as the CDC report but is released a year sooner. The current SART report contains outcome data from 2008.
Before you use these resources to compare rates between clinics to find the “best” clinic available to you, you should be aware of this:
According to the CDC, “Comparisons between clinics must be made with caution. Many factors contribute to the success of an ART procedure. Some clinics may be more willing than others to accept patients with low chances of success or may specialize in various ART (assisted reproductive treatments) that attract particular types of patients.”
The CDC website does a good job highlighting specific factors you should look at when considering a fertility clinic.
How does the lay person interpret this data and drill down to find the best fertility clinic? Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, a reproductive endocrinologist with a practice in the San Francisco Bay area says ‘The best advice I can give a patient when comparing IVF clinics is to look at the pregnancy rate in women over 40 years old. If a clinic has a high success rate in women over 40, you know they have a good lab.
