The IVF Success Rate Dilemma: Why the Right Questions Matter More ?
What are my chances of success? is a question that every patient asks an IVF doctor right away. They blindly assume that since the doctor is so knowledgeable and experienced, they will be able to provide them a trustworthy response.
Yes, the question is extremely important, and the answer is equally important, but the issue is that the question is straightforward, but the answer is not straightforward. And for a number of reasons, this is accurate.
Although a clinic may provide their overall success rates, keep in mind that these figures pertain to specific groups of women. Statistics are helpful when comparing the quality of different clinics, but as an individual, you are more interested in what happens to you than in the outcomes of the other 99 women in the clinic. Therefore, while statistics are important, they are not very useful. Furthermore, clinics frequently manipulate their success rates, as is well known. In India, they simply inflate their numbers, and it appears that every clinic has an 80% success rate. However, there is really no one to verify whether or not that statistic is accurate. It goes without saying that when a clinic posts an 80% success rate on their website, the other clinics will soon follow suit and declare an 85% success rate to try to outperform them! However, since they are not audited, patients are unable to ascertain the true numbers, so all of these are blatant lies. Clinics tell lies because it allows them to get away with it!
Furthermore, it's not like foreign clinics tell lies. They will manipulate "league tables," which rank clinics based on success rate, because they know how crucial they are to drawing patients (who are illiterate and only care about headline numbers). The simplest way to manipulate it is to refuse to treat patients with a poor prognosis. For example, they won't treat elderly patients, which is why their success rate will be higher than that of a clinic that takes care of every patient that walks through the door. Therefore, if you are an elderly patient, your chances of success will be significantly lower than the clinic's average chance of success—something they will not disclose to you!
Additionally, keep in mind that you won't receive a 50% success rate, baby—your success rate won't be 40% or 60%! These percentages mean nothing because the result is binary—it can only be either 0% or 100%. You should also consider what your chances of success are if you decide to do nothing. This is a much more pertinent question, as doing nothing to clear your blocked tubes will result in a zero success rate. Additionally, doing IVF is preferable to doing nothing at all because anything is better than 0%.
Naturally, the inquiry arises: what is the process for selecting an IVF clinic? You want to get pregnant as soon as possible, so of course you want to visit the clinic with a higher success rate! However, since the success rates that clinics quote on their websites are really unreliable, you must delve deeper and pose more probing questions in order to obtain more insightful responses. It's important to keep in mind that doctors are not fortune tellers. However, many physicians overpromise and tell you that their success rates are 80% during your initial consultation because they are in the sell mode. To persuade you, they present a variety of testimonials, such as, "We recently treated a patient who is just like you, and she just had a baby!" However, all of this is just hype, and the figure is merely conjecture!
You have to realise that the doctor will be able to answer this question much more precisely once the IVF cycle is complete, in terms of your unique chance of success. After all, an IVF cycle provides us with important diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive data in addition to being a cycle of treatment. You grew how many eggs? What number of embryos were produced? Did the embryos have excellent quality? Your chances of success are obviously going to be higher if your IVF cycle produces a large number of high-quality blastocysts, but the only way to find out is to undergo the treatment.
Finally, keep in mind that you shouldn't be concentrating on your chances of success in a single cycle. The cumulative conception rate, or the likelihood of becoming pregnant over two or three cycles, is what you should be enquiring about instead. Patients should consider their chances of success over three or four embryo transfers, where they obviously become much higher than they would in a single transfer, as we typically pool embryos for them and transfer them one at a time in our clinic.
Remember that while it may be simple to ask a straightforward question and for the doctor to provide a straightforward response, those responses are incorrect! And many doctors will keep conniving you if you don't realise that.
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