A timely decision

How age affects your chances of IVF success

Have you been seriously considering In vitro fertilisation or IVF treatment? If you have, it’s best that you understand how your age can affect your chances of success. This is so that you can make an informed decision on when to begin. But before we get into that, let’s take a brief look at IVF and what it entails.

For some couples facing fertility problems, IVF is a viable method that can help them to conceive. During IVF, a woman’s ovaries are stimulated and an egg is removed to be fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. Once fertilised, the egg becomes an embryo, and it is returned to the woman’s womb to develop.

Studies have shown that the success of IVF treatments can be affected by a woman’s age. This is because it’s an inescapable fact that a woman’s fertility declines as she grows older. So if you were to undergo IVF using your own eggs, your chances of conceiving would be higher if you were younger.

According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (UK), in the most recent study conducted in 2010, on average, the percentages of live births resulting from women having IVF using their own fresh eggs are: 32.2% for women aged under 35, 27.7% for women aged between 35–37, 20.8% for women aged between 38–39, 13.6% for women aged between 40–42, 5.0% for women aged between 43–44 and 1.9% for women aged 45 and over.

As you can see from the statistics above, a woman’s fertility begins to decline at around age 30 and this exacerbates at about age 38. By the time she is 44, her chances of having babies via IVF with her own eggs is nearly nonexistent at less than 2%. This is why women above the age of 42 are generally discouraged from undergoing IVF, as the success rate is considered far too low.

Most IVF clinics also have an age limit for IVF treatments that use a woman’s own eggs. This is because the age of the eggs is crucial, not the age of the uterus. But, why is egg age so important? Two words – quality and quantity.

‘It’s my biological clock.’

But what is egg quality? In fertility, an egg’s quality refers to its chromosomal status. As a woman’s age increases, the risk of chromosomal abnormalities in her eggs also rises. During IVF, we hope to obtain multiple healthy embryos, whereby the best ones will be selected for transfer into the mother’s uterus. But before embryos are transferred, we need to check their chromosomal status. Therefore, the embryos undergo Preimplantation Genetic Screening or PGS, which checks for chromosomal normalcy. On average, healthy embryos with normal chromosomes have a much higher potential for implantation and live birth.

Meanwhile, egg ‘quantity’ refers to how many eggs are left in a woman’s ovaries. As such, her egg quantity is often called her “ovarian reserve”. Although egg quantity doesn’t greatly impact the chances of a natural conception, in IVF, egg quantity may influence a woman’s response to ovarian- stimulating medications.

So if you’re considering IVF, don’t hesitate to ask questions and seek the advice of a fertility consultant. The information you receive can help you make a decision on when best to start your treatment.