Sahana C.: IVF Success Rates Are One of the Most Misunderstood Numbers in Fertility
Sahana C., Former Data Analyst of Biostatistics at Fakih IVF Fertility Center, shared on LinkedIn:
“Let’s talk about IVF success rates, because they’re probably one of the most misunderstood numbers in fertility.
A clinic says, ‘70% success rate.’
Sounds great.
But success at what, exactly, and for whom?
Per cycle or per embryo transfer?
Those are very different numbers.
A positive pregnancy test or a live birth?
Again, very different outcomes.
And then comes the question that often gets overlooked:
Who are the patients behind that percentage?
A clinic treating predominantly younger patients with favourable prognostic factors may have a very different headline success rate from a clinic treating older patients, patients with diminished ovarian reserve, recurrent implantation failure, or other complex cases.
That doesn’t automatically make one clinic better than the other.
It may simply mean their patient populations are different.
This is why comparing two clinics based only on their headline success rate can be misleading.
You may be looking at two percentages that appear comparable, while the popIVF Success Ratesulations, definitions, treatment pathways, and outcomes behind those percentages are completely different.
And this isn’t necessarily about clinics being misleading.
It’s about the fact that one percentage cannot tell the whole story.
From a data perspective, context matters.
- Age
- Diagnosis
- Treatment type
- Embryo characteristics
- Previous treatment history
- Definition of success
- And, importantly, whether the numbers have been appropriately adjusted for differences in patient characteristics.
So if you’re a patient, instead of only asking:
‘What is your success rate?’
A more useful question might be:
‘What is your live birth rate for patients with a profile similar to mine?’
That question is much harder to answer with a single headline number.
And probably much more useful.
The goal isn’t to find the highest percentage. It’s to understand what the percentage actually represents.”
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