In a departure from the usual IVF miracle baby stories, much attention has been devoted recently to IVF success rates, or more specifically the lack thereof at some of Australia’s worst-performing clinics. Pregnancy rates hover in the single digits at these places, and many industry insiders say the only miracle about these clinics is that they haven’t been shut down. Debate has been raging about whether to publish a confidential league table that would name and shame these poor performers, give public recognition to high achievers, and allow patients to make an informed choice about where they spend their money.
Each year a collaborative report between the Fertility Society of Australia and the National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit is released. It analyses the IVF success rates of Australian and New Zealand clinics. The most recent report, released late last year, was undeniably shocking. Results of live birth outcomes varied from 4 percent at one clinic to 30.9 percent at another. No explanation was provided for this huge and unacceptable discrepancy between the top and bottom clinics.
Although the FSA keeps the league table and knows where individual clinics rank, the findings are not made public and clinics are only told their own results. Some of the top-performing clinics have argued they are in a league of their own and want these rankings made public. The FSA, however, refuses to do so.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: IVF: a numbers game made worse bt rogue clinics
