Breakthrough in IVF success prediction

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new way to predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment will become pregnant.

The researchers tried to identify the most important factors in predicting IVF outcome. They analyzed the association of 30 variables (on patient characteristics, clinical diagnoses, treatment protocol and embryo characteristics) with IVF outcomes, as defined by results of a pregnancy test.

The researchers found four most important factors: total number of embryos, number of eight-cell embryos, percentage of embryos that stopped dividing and would die, and the woman’s FSH level. The four factors together were 70 percent accurate in predicting whether the current IVF cycle would result in a pregnancy. The new method could help doctors and patients decide whether to go for another IVF cycle.

Source: http://med.stanford.edu