What are the chances that the treatment will be a success? This depends largely on the age of the woman as shown in the graph below.

Vertically, is shown how many women out of 100 and of what age, can be expected to have given birth as a result of IVF/ICSI treatment. Horizontally is shown how many attempts at treatment it took.
For example: in the age group of 20-29 yrs, it is predicted that 37 out of 100 women will give birth after the first attempt, 60 after the second and 73 after the third attempt.

With regards to 'average' chances, - in other words if the ages of the women are not considered, nor the number of attempts, then we arrive at the following statistics. Out of the 3000 pick-ups performed a year at the CRG, 90% of the patients will go on to have a transfer, after which the chances of pregnancy are 30%. The chances of the pregnancy progressing to term and resulting in the birth of a child are 25%.

 

The most important conclusion from practical experience is that your individual chances of success are very difficult to predict beforehand. Apart from the age of the woman, the type of treatment, the cause of the fertility problem, and chance play a role. Sometimes the exact same treatment will produce results after the second or third attempt. Why not the first time is not always determinable. That is why counsellors nor doctors will respond to questions about the chances of success of an individual treatment. the risk to create unrealistic expectations - or on the contrary erroneously stifle justified hope- is too great.

 

Therefore we can safely say that it is certainly worth trying the treatment for a lot of couples, although success can never be guaranteed completely.

If IVF treatment using your own genetic material continues to be unsuccessful, the possibility exists to make use of donor sperm or egg cells. For further information, see donation.