Women face fertility minefield

Women seeking fertility treatment face a minefield of confusing and potentially misleading statistics.

There is a huge disparity in success rates advertised by London clinics. Some figures risk being skewed by selection practices which reject older or overweight women or those affected by cancer treatments, who all have lower chances of success.

The Evening Standard checked success rates published by fertility clinics and found they varied widely.

Success rates for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) range from 15 per cent to 37 per cent. For donor insemination, success rates range from 4.5 per cent, far below the natural rate of conception, to 50 per cent. IVF treatment at a private clinic costs ?1,500 to ?6,000 per cycle.

To add to the confusion, a high conception success rate may be due to the fact that a clinic has rejected more difficult cases, while a low figure may be explained by a more universal treatment approach.

But Mary Power, unit manager at the Lister Fertility Clinic, specialising in treating women who have had cancer, said: "It's very difficult to compare like with like in the IVF world because of the selection process. It is very common for clinics to eliminate patients who would reduce their pregnancy rates."

On Tuesday the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) publishes a fertility guide with success rates for clinics across the UK.

A spokeswoman for the HFEA said the report was not a league table. "Each clinic has its own eligibility criteria, which might restrict older patients or those with particular health problems,"-she said. Leila Hanna, medical director at Queen Mary's Hospital's Fertility and Assisted Conception Unit, said: "It is important to have good results but not to the extent that it comes in the way of helping people."

Fertility treatments included in the HFEA ratings include: