IVF Success Rates

Dr. Rakoff has been a leader in bringing IVF (in vitro fertilization) to San Diego since 1983.  His early IVF success led to San Diego’s first IVF baby delivery and shortly thereafter San Diego’s first IVF twin delivery.

Meet our Recent Successful IVF babies

Success rates with IVF are very age sensitive and they also depend on your personal reproductive health. Our goal is to HELP YOU HAVE A BABY THIS YEAR.

THINK POSITIVE! BE SUCCESS ORIENTED!

Studies suggest that people who practice mindful meditation, use acupuncture, or have psychological counseling have better pregnancy rates.

Positive thinking really does help. If you are depressed, seek help. Counseling, psychotherapy and medications are available to patients who are interested.

Remember, donor eggs, donor sperm or gestational surrogates “may” be a better alternative than adoption or childlessness. Keep this in mind if you are not an “ideal candidate” for IVF or other less invasive treatments.

You may not be an ideal candidate if:

You are a woman over 38 years of age or a male over 55.
You are a male who requires a testicular biopsy to retrieve sperm.
You have had intrauterine fibroids.
You have an autoimmune disease (such as Lupus).
You are diabetic.
You have a day 3 FSH hormone level of more than 10.
You produce less than four or five mature eggs per cycle.
You have a bleeding or coagulation disorder.
You have a history of cancer and chemotherapy or radiation.
You have an AMH level less than 0.8.

We know that some people with these aforementioned problems may achieve pregnancy with IVF and, unlike some fertility centers, we will accept you for IVF treatment. However, it is important to know that such couples have a lower success (live birth) rate than our standard cases.

In recent review of 158 sequential IVF cases, we found that due to the referral nature of Dr. Rakoff’s practice, only 44 of the 158 cases would be considered “standard,” which have a substantially better live birth rate than non-standard cases. This is important to consider when considering the success rate statistics of a fertility program.

PREGNANCY SUCCESS RATE STATISTICS

Sorting through statistics for fertility treatment can be a confusing and disheartening process. This is especially true when comparing statistics between practices. Some fertility clinics only accept patients they believe are the most likely to conceive through their treatment program, a practice that ensures the clinic receives high marks for success rates.

We are very proud to offer a different approach. As a referral center, we accept a broad range of patients, whether they fall into the “most likely to conceive” category or not. With this approach, our numbers for success are sometimes lower than some other fertility doctors.

We are very proud of our success rates for our most fertile patients, in our IVF and our Donor Egg IVF programs. We recognize that those with more complex health issues often will have lower success rates. However, we feel it is important to care for all patients and offer everyone a chance to conceive.

Finally, SART, FDA, CDC and Congress all suggest that we not compare statistics from one center to another for the above reasons. For example, some centers with very high published rates may have a high percentage of patients with minimal fertility factors. One such example is fertile couples who are seeking assistance for sex selection to “balance” their family with a child of a particular sex. These fertile couples are reported along with the truly infertile couples. This sometimes gives the appearance that such a center has a higher IVF success rate.

Dr. Rakoff is always striving to improve success rates. To this end, he transferred the care of all of his patients from his aging original IVF Lab at Scripps Clinic Green Hospital to the state of the art IVF Lab at the San Diego Fertility Center. This top-notch staff and team of embryologists have consistently achieved excellent pregnancy results with a wide variety of patients. Their data is available at the SART web site.  Dr. Rakoff’s patients are already reaping the benefits of this superb program.