Inequalities In Fertility Treatment
Do Different Fertility Clinics Offer Different Success Rates?
Fertility treatment success rates vary from clinic to clinic, according to the latest Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority publication on 80 UK clinics. This study shows the average success rate for IVF for women under 35 to be just 27.6%.
Some centres are achieving more than twice this rate.
Suzi Leather, HFEA chairwoman said the guide aimed to help couples struggling to conceive to make informed choices.
"With one in seven people having some difficulty conceiving - almost 3.5m people across the UK - there is clearly a need for straightforward, independent information about infertility, its causes and the treatment options.
"Our guide is designed to cut through the jargon and complex science behind hi-tech fertility treatments to explain the causes of infertility, the possible treatments available and then give detailed information to let people make informed choices about the options available for them."
Ms Leather said forty per cent of GPs told the HFEA that they did not have enough information about fertility services.
"With treatment costing many thousands of pounds, it is right that the people paying for the treatment - the individual or the NHS - should get a proper sense of what they are paying for," she said.
The guide breaks results down by the ages of women receiving fertility treatment and shows success rates to be higher for younger women. Therefore, clinics specialising in treating younger women would be more likely to achieve high levels of success.
Professor Alison Murdoch, of the British Fertility Society, said: "More and more couples are now coming to fertility clinics and many clinics take on couples who have really quite difficult fertility problems, which may be reflected in individual clinics' performance indicators.
"Infertility is a common medical condition, and the important challenge for the NHS now is to expand the level of fertility treatment available to those unable to have children through natural conception."
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