Reproductive Medicine and Infertility Associates

Each IVF pregnancy -- and all other ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) pregnancies -- needs to be followed up on to determine whether or not a live birth occurred. The earliest date clinics can report complete annual data is 9 months past the end of the reporting year, when live births from all ART pregnancies have occurred.
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As such, the results of all the ART cycles that took place in 2017 were not reported until October of 2018. Before any data is reported, the following processes will occur:
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● Before submitting data at the end of 2018, clinics will enter their data from 2017 into NASS (the CDC’s web-based ART data reporting system) and verify that the generated clinic tables are accurate.
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● The CDC prepares preliminary data for individual fertility clinic tables and makes it available in the spring of 2019 on their website.
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● Once the CDC has conducted extensive data checks, they prepare and publish the full report -- which includes all fertility clinic tables and the National Summary table.

Your chances of having a successful IVF pregnancy depend on a variety of different factors, including your age and reason for infertility. It’s important to understand, however, that an IVF pregnancy does not guarantee the delivery of a live infant. Some pregnancies can result in a miscarriage or stillbirth.

With this in mind, the more important question is “If I have an IVF procedure, what are the chances I will have a live baby?”. To provide an accurate answer to this question, you should consider the percentage of IVF cycles that have resulted in live births based on the overall number of cycles carried out to retrieve eggs or to transfer eggs or embryos.

As mentioned, there are a number of unique characteristics that will impact your success rate -- including age, type of infertility, number of embryos being transferred, where you’re choosing to have the procedure and history of any births, miscarriages, or IVF cycles you may have had in the past.

To learn more, we recommend checking our IVF success rate data based on your age bracket or checking the CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health’s IVF success estimator tool.

Westat -- which is a statistical survey research organization -- works directly with all ART clinics in operation to provide IVF success rates to the CDC. Westat also identifies new clinics throughout the year and tracks clinic closings and reorganizations to ensure all data is accurate and up to date.

Westat’s list includes individual providers and clinics that belong to SART (Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology) in addition to providers and clinics that are not SART members.

NASS is also maintained by Westat. This is a web-based ART data reporting system that all clinics use to submit information to the CDC.

In order to have their success rates published in the CDC’s annual report, the data must go through a thorough analysis and quality control process conducted by Westat. See a general overview of how a clinic’s IVF success rates are verified and published by the CDC below:
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1. Clinics need to submit their data in time for an analysis and the accuracy of the clinic tables provided need to be verified (by signature) by the clinics’ medical directors.
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2. The data is reviewed by Westat. If corrections are needed, they will contact the clinic directly.
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3. Once the data has been checked, validation will begin. This is an annual quality control process that involves visiting select clinics to review medical record data for a sample of the clinics ART cycles.
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4. Westat’s validation team abstracts information from the patient’s medical record for each cycle and then compares it to the data the clinic originally submitted for the report.

The validation process ensures that each clinic provides accurate data and helps identify systematic issues that could cause inconsistencies or discrepancies in the data collection process.