Artificial Insemination Clinic Success Rates

When choosing the best artificial insemination clinic for you, success rate of the clinic is an important factor. As it should not be the only factor you take in consideration, however it offers important information about artificial insemination clinics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publishes yearly the Assisted Reproductive Technology Success Rates report. Since 1992 fertility clinics are required by law to report their data to the CDC annually.

The Assisted Reproductive Technology Report publishes success rates for every clinic in United States. The report also offers besides the success rate, the types of diagnoses treated and fertility treatments offered by the artificial insemination clinics. When you look through these success rates, pay attention to the total cycles performed by the artificial insemination clinics, the type of diagnoses treated and the age breakdown of success rates. Other information the report provides are: the types of ART the clinics performs, the number of cycles from fresh embryos vs. frozen embryos, the average number of embryos transferred and clinic services such as donor egg, donor embryo, gestational carries, cryopreservation.

The report is meant to help infertility patients make informed decision about assisted reproductive technology. The report does not recommend that patients choose a fertility clinic based on success rates only.

The report from 2008, for example, presented 436 artificial insemination clinics in operation in the United States. The clinics that are omitted in the study are because they failed to submit data or did not provide the proper verification. The report includes graphs and charts. The figures are organized according to the type of procedure. The report shows 148,055 cycles performed in 2008 at the clinics taken in consideration and there were 46,326 live births and 61,426 babies born. From this data it is estimated that more than 1% of total US births are via assisted reproductive technology.

When you check the CDC report you should keep in mind that the data is 3 years old. That's because the artificial insemination clinics have to report live births (which occurs 9 months after the ART cycles are complete) and because the CDC needs time to compile, review and publish the data.

The report also does not specify success rates related to specific diagnoses. The clinic reports are telling you the percentage of patients with specific diagnoses but this is not included in the success rates. Therefore the report does not tell you whether your particular fertility issue has a good chance of being treated at a certain clinic.

When reading the report, if you find some clinics that have data too good to be true, there is a possibility that they are manipulating the numbers and protecting their success rates. They can do this by: transferring a high number of embryos to increase the chances of successful outcome, picking IVF cases that need low number of IVF cycles, turning down prospective patients of advanced maternal age, high percentage of canceled cycles before attempting transfer. An artificial insemination clinic might have a high success rate but they might have a high number of multiple pregnancies which is not desirable.

When choosing an artificial insemination clinic it is important to also take in consideration, besides the success rate, the whole fertility professional team: nurses, therapists, financial advisors, embryologists and staff and your reproductive endocrinologist. After choosing a couple of artificial insemination clinics, you should pay them a visit which will provide you with information not available in the reports. It will also allow you to interact with the staff and observe how they treat the patients.

It is also important to take the distance and location of the artificial insemination clinics into consideration because you might have to visit it quite often. Some of them might offer satellite office locations aside from their main clinic. You should also check their office hours, especially if you have a full time job. Evening or weekend appointment hours for office visits, fertility tests and treatments may be necessary.

Besides good success rates, the artificial insemination clinic that you chose should also be a member of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology. This is because in order to be a member they have to meet certain ethical and practical standards.

Another important factor is the number of IVF cycles the artificial insemination clinic performed per year. As a very high number is not recommended because then you will feel like another number for the clinic and you might not get too much focus, you want however a clinic that is experienced in IVF. A number of 120 total IVF cycles in one year is a good number. This gives 2 cycles per week meaning that they routinely perform IVF procedures.

As fertility treatments are costly, mostly due to the fact that you need more cycles in order to conceive, it is helpful is the artificial insemination clinic you choose accepts health insurance plan or offers payment plans or financing.

You might want to ask your artificial insemination clinic the following:

• Will I see my doctor every time I visit the clinic? Will it be the same doctor every time?
• Can I contact my doctor directly and get an answer within one day?
• Will I be charged every time I contact the doctor?
• Does the clinic have its own onsite embryology lab and a PhD embryologist?
• How many different IVF medication protocols are offered by the clinic?
• What exact services are included or not included in the price for an IVF cycle?

The point of this article is to show that success rate provided by CDC is very important in choosing the right artificial insemination clinic, however the data might be misleading if using it alone. Next to the success rates, there are many other factors the couples should look at when choosing their fertility clinic.