I absolutely LOVE to give my patients the news they wanted to hear. ” Yes, Madam XYZ, your pregnancy test is positive”, and I live on the thrills of having them laugh with tears of delights and relief. However, on the flip side of the coin, I HATE to give them the news they dreaded most, which is when the test result is negative.

This is the reality of IVF, you win some battles, and you lose some. We rejoice with the patients’ victories and we weep for their defeats.

For those battles that we lost, what is the next step forward?

We talked about the overall success rates of ONE IVF a few days ago and  we know for sure that if you have a good number of embryos from the result of ONE IVF, the chance of you getting pregnant with the subsequent Frozen embryo transfer is extremely likely, especially if you are under the age of 35. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that Frozen embryo transfers yields a higher pregnancy rate compared to fresh embryos transfers

(Rogue M at al. Fresh embryo transfer versus frozen embryo transfer in in-vitro fertilization cycles: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Fertil Steril. 2013 Jan;99(1):156-62)

However, if you have no embryos frozen, what is your option?

This chart below showed a cumulative live IVF births from a study conducted in Australia.

This study looked at all the women under the age of 42, who are going through IVF.

The study revealed that the pregnancy rate is around 40% in this group of women after they completed their first cycle of IVF. For those women who did not get pregnant the first round and went on having the second round of IVF, there were another 20% who got pregnant after the second round. Therefore, by the 4th IVF cycle, around 80% of women would have achieved a live birth.

This statistic clearly shows that if you  persevere and keep moving on, chances of you getting pregnant by the end of the 4th IVF is around 80%.

Therefore, it is not unusual for Fertility doctors to encourage our patients to keep moving on because the statistics had clearly show us the evidence.