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Fertility treatment and IVF success rates

We are proud of our success rates and want you to feel confident when choosing a clinic. Our aim is to inform and empower you to feel clear about the next step.

Understanding fertility clinics' success rates

If you're considering fertility treatment, it's likely you've heard a lot about success rates. Clinics display their success rates so that you can see how successful fertility treatments are for helping patients conceive and have a baby.


Success rates in the United Kingdom are regulated by the fertility governing body, the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority). All fertility clinics are required to collect and present their data in the same way, but the amount of information and different ways that clinics present their rates can feel overwhelming and confusing.


The HFEA recommends that patients compare clinic success rates to the national average. To help you compare, we have provided breakdowns in the same format that the HFEA does on their website and compared them to the last year of available data from the HFEA.


This is because a clinic's success rates cannot tell you your chance of getting pregnant. Success rates can help you understand a clinic’s overall quality. An individual patient's success rate depends primarily on their medical history, age and the reason for their infertility.

How to use fertility clinics' success rates

When evaluating a clinic's success rates, consider the following:

1
Look for transparency

Does the clinic clearly and transparently explain their rates? Do they provide a reliability range to help you understand how likely their success rates will stay at that rate?

2
Ask if all patients are accepted

Does the clinic treat all patients, or only those below a certain age or who meet certain criteria? A clinic that specialises in difficult cases may have a lower success rate but be a better fit for you.

3
Evaluate realistically

Are their rates consistent with the national average? Do they seem too good to be true? Understanding the patient selection criteria and the data will help you gain a clearer picture. Don't be afraid to ask clinics to explain.

4
Decide what is important to you

When choosing a clinic, success rates are one part of the picture. Whether the clinic also provides counselling, the convenience of the location or services, and their breadth of service are also all factors to consider when making your decision.

Apricity's fertility treatment and IVF success rates

These graphs illustrate our success rates for all Apricity patients who were treated between 2020 and 2022 using own and donor eggs. We have compared them with the latest published national average from the HFEA (2018) so you can see what is considered 'normal' for clinics in the UK.


Apricity's success rates exceed the national average for all age groups

Almost 40% of the embryos transferred in 2022 resulted in a birth for patients under 38 and using their own eggs. This is 32% higher than the national average.

For all patients using their own eggs, regardless of age, Apricity produced more babies born per embryo transferred by 26%.

For those using donor eggs, success rates exceed 40% regardless of age

Age is much less impactful for patients when using donor eggs. Regardless of the birthing mother's age, 41% of embryos transferred resulted in a baby born.

Dig into the data

We're committed to making our rates transparent and easy to understand. Below you can find our success rates graphs that adhere to the HFEA guidelines, who request that success rates are shown for ages above and below 38, and also combined ages.


A quick guide on how to use these graphs:

1
Choose metrics that match your situation
Select an age and egg source (own eggs or donor eggs) to closer match your journey.
2
Look at the national average
This is taken from the HFEA's national average of UK clinics. We use the most recent data that has been published which was for 2018.
3
Compare versus Apricity
We've detailed the national average percentage as well as our own percentage.
4
Check the reliability range
This shows how confident we are that our success rates will stay within this range.

How do I compare you to other fertility clinics?

When comparing different fertility clinics, it’s important to remember that success rates are one part of the picture. Other factors such as support and clinical care are huge factors in how patients feel about their fertility journeys, and can impact the outcome.


There are key factors that can affect the success of IVF, such as the cause of infertility, and the individual patients themselves. Patient's BMI, age, and underlying health conditions, or infertility can all impact on their success rate.


Some of the key things to look for when comparing are age and egg source, and whether the data presents births per embryos transferred or per embryo transfer events, and any other variables that could be behind differing statistics. Certain clinics may specialise in treating particular kinds of infertility that can impact on their success rates.

What's the national average for fertility success rates?

The national average is taken from the HFEA, the UK's fertility sector regulatory body. The HFEA collects and publishes data from different clinics in the UK. According to the HFEA, the most important thing to focus on when looking at success rates is whether a clinic’s results are consistent with the national average. They recommend avoiding reading into differences within a few percentage points, as they can be down to chance rather than a clinic’s abilities. For each of our IVF success rate measures, we also show the national average, so that you can compare.

Working with partner clinics & HFEA

Apricity operates a satellite treatment model, where assessment, drug therapy and monitoring are managed by Apricity, and egg collection, embryology and embryo transfer take place within our network of

. Apricity remains responsible for the care of the patient, and the model allows us to offer additional benefits to our patients, such as flexible and low-travel options.

IVF success rates

A clinic’s IVF success rate is the percentage of treatments that result in a clinical pregnancy, birth, or live birth. Understanding how each is measured is important for ensuring that you are fully informed on the average chances of success.

Donor egg success rates

A

on the statistics for IVF and donation for cycles in 2018 was recently released by the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority). What is striking is the very clear difference in terms of a successful outcome when using donor eggs.


Particularly, and most significantly, for women over 40 years old, the chances of a live birth more than doubles when using an egg donor. And when the woman is 43 and upwards, chances of IVF success are over 7 times higher when using an egg donor over own eggs. We have illustrated key findings from the data in the graph below:

ivf birth rates by age, own vs donor eggs
Quite simply, when it comes to having a baby, egg donation considerably overtakes IVF with own eggs. Yet the research showed that egg donation was not ‘widely used’. It is understandable on an emotional level why not, but these statistics seem to be too important to miss when considering options.

What is the ideal number of eggs?

A

of over 400,000 IVF treatment cycles in the UK has found a ’strong association’ between the number of eggs retrieved prior to a woman undergoing IVF and live birth rate. The findings suggest that chances of a live birth increased with the number of eggs collected up to the number of 15, after which it began to decline.


This study looked at the number of eggs collected from cycles of treatment to the outcome of live births and found that the ideal number of eggs to collect is between 10- 15. This gives the recipient couple the greatest chance of a live birth and a family.


All the Altrui egg donors who have undergone IVF cycles to date have produced the ideal number of eggs and the donors have not found any problems with producing this number. Each ovary contains about 500,000 eggs and any egg donation leaves the donor with many more for future children for themselves.

Useful definitions

Age and eggs

Both a woman's age and ovarian reserve are both known to significantly affect chances of conception, and only looking at a specific cohort or a total average could be misleading. This is why we included the options to select under age 38 or over, and using own eggs or donor, both of which account for varying data respectively.


Clinical pregnancy

Clinical pregnancy is defined as when a heartbeat can be detected in the womb (also known as a pregnancy rate).


Live birth
A live birth is the medical definition for when a baby is born showing any signs of life. It is different from the general birth rate.


Reliability range

The reliability range is a measure of how confident we are that success rates will stay the same in the future. Larger clinics tend to have narrower reliability ranges. It does not mean that their data is more reliable, but simply that there is more of it, which means rates are less likely to be affected by changes in one year's worth of births.

Clinical pregnancy per embryo transfer event


Based on 107 cycles or embryo transferred

Clinical pregnancy per embryo transferred


Based on 117 cycles or embryos transferred

Live births per embryo transfer event


Based on 107 cycles or embryos transferred

Live births per embryo transferred


Based on 117 cycles or embryos transferred

Multiple live birth rate

Percentage of births that are multiple births

Based on 42 cycles or embryo transferred

Ⓒ Apricity Fertility UK Limited. All rights reserved