Calculation of the probability of pregnancy with assisted reproduction treatment

The calculator allows you to know in advance what the chances of pregnancy will be with one or more assisted reproduction treatments.

This, according to the researchers who developed it, can emotionally help couples who will face the path of medically assisted procreation (MAP)

The probability in question is calculated using two  tools developed by the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

1. calculator with no other IVF/ICSI treatments behind
2. calculator with previous IVF/ICSI courses

The first calculates the probability before the first treatment, the second calculates the probabilities when there are already unsuccessful assisted fertilization treatments behind you.

The calculator, giving an estimate of the chances of success for subsequent cycles, also allows you to understand what the economic commitment will be in order to achieve a pregnancy. In fact, if I know a priori that I will most likely need 3-4 treatment cycles, some assessments can also be made from a financial point of view.

How to use the calculator 1

The use of the calculator is very simple, in fact it requires few data:

• The age of the woman
• The number of years of pregnancy research
• if there are problems ovulating
• If there is an ovulation problem
• Whether it is unexplained infertility
• If there is a tubal patency problem
• If there have been other previous pregnancies
• If your partner has fertility problems
• If you plan an IVF or ICSI course

Age, as you will see, has a big impact on results.

For example, these are my details:

And this is the result obtained with the calculator.

In practice, with just one cycle of treatment I would have only a 19.68% chance of having a baby, to exceed 50% of the chances I would have to undergo 5 cycles.

Now let’s do a little experiment.

If I leave all the data the same but change the age down to 30, the graph changes a lot:

Conversely, if I increase my age by just one year, bringing it to 41 (and therefore bringing the years of attempts to 2):

So next year I would have a 14.51% chance, more than 5% less than this year and 6 cycles would not be enough for me to reach a 50% chance.

This makes us understand how important it is not to postpone the decision to undergo fertility treatment if the age is not the best…

How to use the calculator 2

In this case the required data is slightly different

Also in this case, probability graphs are obtained.

The creation of the 2 calculators was possible thanks to the study conducted on 113,873 women with 184,269 complete cycles of in vitro fertilization.

Warnings

The calculator is only an estimate and only a reproductive medicine specialist will be able to provide a complete analysis of the couple’s situation and will also be able to help them based on other factors that are specific to each couple and which cannot be included in the model.

In vitro fertilization is an expensive procedure both in economic terms but also in terms of physical and mental effort. Therefore, before deciding which path to take, it is advisable to collect all possible information and medical opinions.