Better Infertility Treatment Success Rates

Nov. 12 -- Science is helping more and more people become parents and experts say the technology and the success rates are getting better all the time.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, about 15 percent of couples in the United States are affected by infertility. While the majority of these cases are effectively treated with medical therapies like medication and surgery, some couples are left to seek more advanced technologies to help them conceive.

In vitro fertilization, introduced to the United States in 1981, is one of the more popular solutions. Through the end of 1999, more than 177,000 babies have been born from all assisted reproductive technologies, including IVF, according to a count by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and its affiliate, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

And the real news now is that these technologies are getting even better at treating infertility. "The biggest advance that has taken place over the years is the increase in success," says Dr. Richard Paulson, chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

And that success rate has improved dramatically. Some estimate the current success rate to be about 50 percent per cycle of treatment. That is compared to a success rate of about 14 percent almost 20 years ago.

Getting Better All the Time

Many factors have contributed to the increase in success. And one technique that many experts credit was the development of ICSI, or intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in 1992.

During the ICSI procedure, a single sperm is injected into a single egg to form an embryo. It gave many men facing low to zero sperm counts the opportunity to father children using assisted reproductive technologies.

"We can take sperm from the ejaculate, we can take sperm from the epididymis, we can even take sperm from testicular biopsies," says Dr. William Gibbons, director of the Jones Institute of Reproductive Medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School. "These were very effective ways of initiating fertilization and allowing these couples to conceive."