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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- For couples struggling to get pregnant, new guidelines may help them decide whether in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a good choice.
Researchers say a new method can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman undergoing IVF treatment will become pregnant. During IVF, a woman is given drugs to induce ovulation and her eggs are retrieved from the ovaries. The eggs are then transferred to a sperm-containing culture dish in a laboratory. Five to 12 embryos are typically produced with each IVF cycle and the one or two most viable ones are then put back into the womans uterus. On average, 18 to 45 percent of women in the United States get pregnant with IVF using their own eggs.
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Stanford University researchers analyzed clinical data from 665 IVF cycles and reviewed 30 variables in relation to their outcomes. They identified four variables critical in making predictions about pregnancy success, including total number of embryos, number of eight-cell embryos, percentage of embryos that stopped dividing and would die, and the womans level of follicle-stimulating hormone level, which helps assess ovarian function.
Experts say IVF research needs to move from focusing on selecting the best embryos to targeting the techniques that would improve the quality of the entire group of embryos. Better predictive information, they say, would be especially useful for the financially and emotionally expensive procedure.
SOURCE: Public Library of Science-ONE, 2008;3:e2562
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