Cumulative probability of live birth after three in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection cycles

The long-term prognosis for live birth in couples initiating fertility treatments

“…Few women starting with ART had both ART and IUI treatments. Comparing with previous studies from Sweden and the US, birthrates are similar to conservative estimates after 3-5 cycles (Olivius et al, 2002;Malizia et al, 2009;Stern et al, 2010). A UK study presented lower conservative estimates of 44% after eight fresh cycles with possible adjacent frozen-thawed cycles.…”

“…The conservative estimate is the proportion of women who deliver out of all couples entering treatment, including drop-outs (Malizia et al, 2009;McLernon et al, 2016). Optimistic estimates are assessed with survival analyses, such as Kaplan-Meier, were the time axis corresponds to the number of cycles and women are censored when they drop out of treatments (Olivius et al, 2002;Malizia et al, 2009;McLernon et al, 2016). Such estimates are made on the assumption that censored couples would have reached the same birthrates as the couples who continue treatments, had they continued (Bland and Altman, 1998;Daya, 2005;Mahesshwari et al, 2015).…”

Male factor infertility and ART

“…According to them, about 60% of couples in whom the female partner is younger than 37 years of age will achieve childbirth within 4 cycles. 77,78 However, in women aged over 37 years, this figure decreases to 20%. 79 Studies reporting on cumulative delivery rates in couples where testicular sperm was used are even more scarce.…”

Estimating cumulative live-birth rates after IVF treatment with Kaplan–Meier and competing risk methods

“…We utilised data from the largest IVF Centre in Singapore to derive CLBR from IVF treatment cycles, comparing the often used KM methodology [12,13] with the CR methodology [19,20,23]. In previous articles assessing the CLBR of IVF/ICSI techniques, the main technique used was the KM method, with CLBR varying from 37.0% to 73.2% after three cycles [9][10][11]25]. We found an overall CLBR of 52% after 2 years with the same KM methodology, falling between the point estimates published by other groups.…”

“…Hence there had been increasing efforts to report IVF success rates as cumulative live-birth rates (CLBR) to guide more relevant prognostication and meaningful counselling [6]. Initial studies utilised cross-sectional data, which does not account for the effect of time on IVF outcomes [7][8][9][10]. Increasingly, longitudinal analyses of individual women considering all their treatment cycles are providing a more meaningful estimation [1,11].…”