‘Natural’ form of IVF has a 90% failure rate
A FERTILITY treatment promoted as a more natural form of IVF is successful in just one in ten cases, leading some experts to question its growing popularity with childless couples.
Hundreds of British couples every year pay up to £3,000 a time for natural-cycle IVF.
It has been growing in popularity in recent years – up 30 per cent between 2012 and 2013 – because it does not use drugs and hormones to artificially stimulate the ovaries and is said to be kinder to a woman’s body.
For many women it offers their only hope for a baby.
Conventional IVF success rates have more than doubled over the past
‘It is an essential option for many’
40 years. Around a quarter of the 60,000 cycles carried out annually in the UK result in a live birth, or one in three for women under 35.
But there are risks involved, including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can cause kidney failure and, in rare cases, death.
Many clinics now offer natural IVF and around 2 per cent of all cycles are performed this way. It involves tracking a woman’s cycle and harvesting the single egg.
But new data uncovered by embryologist Professor Simon Fishel, who helped create the world’s first test tube baby, Louise Brown in 1978, showed that since 2010, the average live birth rate was 11 per cent in couples using the method. That dropped to 4 per cent in women over 38. The figures emerged following a Freedom of Information request by Professor Fishel to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.
He said: ‘I’d be concerned that some clinics might use the natural method as a hook, and that patients will eventually need conventional IVF later.
‘Are patients being strung along with smoke and mirrors without being well enough informed?’
He said that at his own CARE chain of fertility clinics there had been 31 cycles of natural IVF, with just three live births.
Professor Geeta Nargund, who runs Create Fertility clinics, said natural IVF was offered to women who would not benefit from standard treatments. She said they were always told of the success rates, which at Create varied from 25 per cent to under 10 per cent.
Professor Nargund added: ‘Standard stimulated IVF cannot be compared with natural IVF. Natural IVF is a different method of treatment offered to different patient groups – women with low egg reserve where stimulation carries no benefits. It is an essential option for many who wish to try for a baby using their own eggs.’