IUI's and 3-5 cycles

kbrodie06

Anyone know why they say expect it to take 3-5 cycles for successful IUI? I am going to ask and did google it but got little. i will see what DR says. Anyone ask before?

Kristin

BostonGayGal

Just the idea that the success rate is a range based on a number of factors like maternal age and such, but somewhere between 15-20%.  This is a helpful link:

https://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/iui.html

I am on my third cycle, 5th IUI.   

tumble

I was wondering same thing gees, if i have to do like 5 wouldn't it be just as cheap to do IVF mine are 1500 a pop plus meds? i'm just learning so.......

&&

My insurance only required me to do 3 IUI cycles before moving on to IVF, so my doc was fine with giving the IUI 3 tries and then moving on... luckily I got pg before needing IVF~

GL

Nature Lover

If there is a 20% cahnce of success, it might take 5 cycles (20x5 =100% chance of success).  That being said, I have read that if it doesn't work after 3 tries its pretty unlikely to work (chance of success drops after 3 tries) so I would really not want to try more than 3 times (just my opinion).

As for IUI vs IVF, people do multiple IUIs instead of IVF b/c IUIs are much less invasive and MUCH less expensive. I asked a similar question a few weeks ago andhave learned alot since then. I don't think I realized before that IUI is pretty simple procedure while IVF is pretty major (involving anesthesia and time out of work). Also I think (not entirely sure) that you need more and stronger drugs for IVF and I for one am most worried about all of these drugs - what they will do to me short term (mood swings S/E etc.) but even more so about what they will do to me long term.

 Keep in mind that the success rate for IUI is not cur and dried. I pasted some info below that I found (and what it doesn't mention is that success rate also has to do with what types of meds are used (oral versus injectibles):

What is the success rate for IUI?

A: Searching through about a dozen medical journal articles and a number of web sites resulted in a rather wide range of statistics. Basically the odds of success are reported to be just under 6 percent and as high as 26 percent per cycle. The low statistics are with one follicle, while multiple follicles resulted in as high 26 percent success. Another influencing factor is sperm count. Higher sperm counts increase the odds of success; however, there was little difference between success with good-average counts and those with high counts. The overall success rate seems to be between 15-20 percent per cycle, judging from the articles which will be abstracted below. The rate of multiple gestation pregnancies is 23-30 percent.

 

met_at_the_ball

Thanks for that helpful info. I am slowly discovering that DH and I may be good candidates for IUI due to poor SA and possible variscoles (sp?).