Breakthrough in IVF success prediction

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new way to predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment will become pregnant. The researchers tried to identify the most important factors in **predicting IVF outcome**. They analyzed the association of 30 variables (on patient characteristics, clinical diagnoses, treatment protocol and embryo characteristics) with IVF outcomes, as defined by results of a pregnancy test. #img_994#.> The researchers found **four most important factors**: total number of embryos, number of eight-cell embryos, percentage of embryos that stopped dividing and would die, and the woman’s FSH level. The four factors together were **70 percent** accurate in predicting whether the current IVF cycle would result in a pregnancy. The new method could help doctors and patients decide whether to go for another IVF cycle. Source: "http://med.stanford.edu":[ http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2008/july/IVF.html]

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