Date Published: 8 March 2010

New information for fertility patients published

New data published by HFEA will give fertility patients an in depth look at the likely success of their treatment.

Choose a Fertility Clinic, launched last year, gives patients a clinic by clinic breakdown of success rates. The new in depth analysis of national data being published today will give patients a nationwide picture covering thousands of treatment cycles and their outcomes.

Patients can now look in detail at information relevant to them: by age, whether it is IVF or ICSI, fresh or frozen embryos, or using their own or donor eggs. The information then covers the patient pathway from the beginning of treatment right through to the outcome including:

• of those who start treatment how many go on to have a baby
• the likelihood of becoming pregnant with a singleton or multiples
• what may happen to the pregnancy ? singleton, multiple or pregnancy loss
• and the outcome for the babies born as a result of treatment including whether they are pre-term or low birth weight

Carried out by the Oxford based National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, the analysis looks at IVF and ICSI treatment cycles which took place in 2006. Over 13,000 babies were born that year as a result of fertility treatment, 61% were singletons, 38% were twins and 1% were triplets or above.

Fertility treatment success rates for women 37 and younger are much higher than for women over 37, as are the multiple birth rates. The risk of losing one or both babies in multiple pregnancy is also much higher for older women.

Prof Lisa Jardine, Chair of the HFEA, said:

?No decision is more personal than a decision about your own fertility. We want to help people make their choices by making available as much evidence and analysis as we can provide. This new set of data adds a whole new dimension to what is available.?

This new information complements the data already published on HFEA's Choose a Fertility Clinic site at: www.hfea.gov.uk/guide.
As well as its usefulness for patients the data will also be a valuable source of information for fertility clinicians and researchers.

Note about the source of this item: The HFEA is the UK government's independent regulator for IVF treatment and embryo research. Their role is to protect patients and the public interest, to drive improvement in the treatment and research sectors and to provide information to the public and policymakers about treatment and research. The HFEA was set up in August 1991 as part of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (UK Law), 1990. The HFEA's principal tasks are to license and monitor clinics that carry out in vitro fertilisation (IVF), donor insemination (DI) and human embryo research. The HFEA also regulates the storage of gametes (eggs and sperm) and embryos.

News is included on the IvyRose website to inform visitors about current health issues, but not to endorse any particular view or activity. Any views expressed in the article above are not necessarily those of IvyRose Ltd.. Material in this news item was released by the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) on 08 March 2010 and may have been edited (e.g. in style, length, and/or for ease of understanding by our international readers) for inclusion here. For further information, please visit their website.