The HFEA is the authority which regulates and holds information about every IVF clinic in the U.K.

The information about success rates is published on their websites.Guides to clinics/ Every clinic is inspected to ensure that they meet the UK government standards and rules in relation to safety and ethics. In 2014 The HFEA published its data on fertility clinics.

How rates are compared. 

Clinics are ranked by the national average. A clinics birth rate is presented as either above, below or consistent with the national average live birth rate, this data is used to predict the future chance of a live birth for an average patient who goes to that clinic. This is presented as a range. eg, the predicted chance is between 12 – 28%.

Presenting the figure as a range is the preferred method, simply because no statistic is absolute and results vary from year to year. If an upper range is chosen this may change yearly. The range varies from one clinic to the next depending on the number of cycles performed yearly.

For example: If a clinic carried out 100 treatment cycle a year and 20 women had a live birth. This is a 20% live birth rate for that year.

How likely is it that the clinic could repeat this performance if it treated another 100 women with similar treatment needs under similar clinical conditions the following year? The range gives the answer that the success rate will fall between 12% and 28%.

There is no official ‘league table’ of UK fertility clinics, however, the results that are published by the HFEA do give a broad indication of the top-performing clinics in the country and show which ones have above-average rates of success.
The actual life birth rates shows how a clinic performs in a year. This data is used to predict the future but it’s by no way a guarantee of the results for each individual patient.

How figures are collate

Data published on the HFEA’s website is from individual treatment cycles and results gathered by individual clinics.

The HFEA visits clinics periodically to assess the reliability of their reporting. Each clinic is required to check the individual cycle and outcome data held by the HFEA against their own medical records for the reporting period, and then to self certify, by signing a document confirming the data they have provided is correct.

Success Rates:

There are many reasons why a clinic may have a higher or lower success rate. This maybe due to the fact that some clinics may treat few or more patient with difficult fertility problems than the national average. 

Latest Clinical Pregnancy Rates for London Clinics (results categorised by age group and listed alphabetically) HFEA published data (on 19/5/2014) for the period 1st July 2012 – 30th June 2013 (For fresh IVF & ICSI cycles)

< 35 years  35-37 years 38-39 years 40-42 years

ARGC                                     80.2%         68.3%           50.0%.             47%

Bart’s                                       36.3%        31.1%             25.2% 9.    9 out of   41*

Chelsea & Westminster     45.7%         34.3%           20.3%           14.8%

CREATE                                    40.2%       40.0%  10 out of 39*       19.3%

CRM*                                        44.3%       37.9%            29.0%          21.4%

Guy’s                                        36.0%         33.1%.           29.7%.         21.6%

Hammersmith                      41.2%          31.1%           26.6%           13.3%

Homerton                               23.6%         22.7%            17.1%           14.3%

Kings College assisted        30.6%.       31.9%             21.2%          17.5%

London Fertility Centre     29.3%        30.9%              20.4%         14.2%

London Women’s Clinic     32.8%        31.0%              25.5%          11.3%

Reproductive Genetics        54.4%       42.4%              42.3%         30.0%

The Bridge Centre                   29.4%      24.6%             17.7%         11.2%

The Lister Fertility Clinic     49.5%    38.2%                26.7%        21.5%

UCH*                                          42.8%      40.1%               36.1%       29.4%

 

Other related posts: Surviving Treatment, Exploring Treatment Options. ,Infertility: When to seek help

 

Disclaimer:

The information contained here is intended as a guide only, the writer is not an IVF specialist. Please check the HEFA website HFEA site  for more recent published data. This data was taken from the ARGC website, which has the highest results across all age range.

*Centre for Reproductive Medicine Coventry, UCH Centre for Reproductive and Genetic Health.

*% not applicable if number of cycles is less than 50 in any group.