IVF clinics ‘are conning couples with misleading success rates’
IVF ‘waste of cash’
THOUSANDS of couples are being misled by IVF clinics making inflated claims about the chances of having a baby, Government-backed research said yesterday.
It found that two-thirds of clinics – which charge patients up to £15,000 for treatment – are pitching for custom using ‘cherry-picked’ figures to show off their success.
But the statistics are frequently based on unreliable, obscure or unexplained data, and in some cases clinics make claims that cannot possibly be accurate, academics from Manchester University said.
The inquiry follows a study last year that found additional ‘bolt-on’ treatments sold by clinics for up to £3,000 a time to improve the chances of conception are often worthless and may even be harmful.
In the last year for which figures are available, 2013, more than 28,000 people met IVF costs themselves in the hope of conceiving.
Manchester University researcher Jack Wilkinson said more than twothirds of clinics made claims about success rates, but many ‘may be highly misleading, because clinics can cherry-pick their results from a dizzying array of options’.
He claimed that clinics have a strong incentive to do this, adding: ‘IVF is expensive and likely to fail, though couples may not get that impression when visiting these IVF clinic websites.
‘The concern is that clinics can always construct figures that show their own performance in the best possible light while making competitors look bad.
‘There is a strong incentive to selectively report success rates in a way that exaggerates performance. A lack of binding guidance means that clinics are free to do this.’
For the study, funded by the Department of Health’s National Institute for Health Research, researchers examined 79 websites run by fertility clinics. They found that 53 reported the organisation’s success rate. However, 51 different ways of measuring this ‘ success’ were being used.
Looking at one measure, the number of pregnancies achieved, the experts counted 31 ways of reporting these figures.
For example, some used initial ‘ biochemical pregnancies’ that can be detected only by blood or urine tests, while others report clinical pregnancies, which is when pregnancy can be revealed by ultrasound testing.
As well, as this, there were nine different ways of reporting the numbers of babies born, each based on figures from different points in the IVF cycle. Eleven reported in other ways, using rates of pregnancy or multiple births.
Only one clinic gave information about ‘adverse events’ undergone by patients such as miscarriage. The researchers also found nine clinics that offered league tables to draw in customers.
The study concluded: ‘ These tables were invariably constructed so that the comparison was favourable to the reporting clinic.’
Fourteen clinics gave figures without saying how old their patients were – a figure that misleads as older patients have a lower chance of pregnancy.
One clinic was found to be making claims in January 2015 about births achieved from treatments for the whole of 2014. The authors commented that this was ‘not possible, given the follow-up period necessary to establish live birth.’
The report called for a ban on advertising by clinics if they do not stick to binding statistical standards when making claims about success rates.
A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility clinics, said yesterday: ‘ We expect clinics to follow our requirements to present data fairly, accurately, and in a manner that helps patients make the best choices for their future treatment.
‘However, with our redesigned Choose a Fertility Clinic due in the spring, our requirements around clinics’ websites are due for update this summer. So we expect the situation to improve for patients soon.’
The Mail, November 26, 2016
‘Lack of binding guidance’
Thousands of IVF couples ‘would conceive on their own if they kept trying’ From Saturday’s Mail