IUI Success Rate Question

longhornwino0907 · January 2015

As DH and I enter into our first IUI cycle, we've been doing a lot of research on success rates and such. And I found myself wondering something. Apologies if this didn't need its own thread, I just wasn't sure where to ask this.

On TTGP, we always stress that couples have a 20% chance of getting pregnant each month. Meaning healthy couples, I'm assuming. However, my RE's website, and a lot of the research I've done, indicates that success rates with medicated IUI cycles fall anywhere from 8-15% chance each cycle. This isn't jiving for me. Why would doctors treat fertility issues with something that has an even lower chance of success? From the reading I've done, that 20% figure may actually be too high for most couples, and it may sit closer to 6-10%. Does anyone know if these percentages are accurate? Maybe I'm not finding the right information. Or maybe there are factors in the percentages that I'm not considering or aware of. I don't know.

DH is an engineer, and therefore a numbers man. He wants to know our chances here, and the information I keep finding is either conflicting as far as the numbers or, or completely illogical to my brain (lower chances for IUI than for unmedicated, regular ol' trying naturally). Help?

deelopi9 · January 2015

I use this as my guideline. I do not attend this RE clinic, however, with my research this is probably the closest I've been able to match.
https://www.advancedfertility.com/iui-success-rates.htm

Remylove1011 · January 2015

This will really vary depending on your diagnosis, but maybe explanation of my situation will help.

Right now our diagnosis is MFI (low motility and low morph) and the RE estimated our chances of success without medical intervention (aka HIO) were something stupid like 1% (way less than the "normal" 20%). By using IUI our chances for success are significantly increased to 6-10%, as they'll hopefully be able to get some good numbers post wash. Does that make sense?

Edit. ugh typing

longhornwino0907 · January 2015

Thanks ladies!

@deelopi9, that's one website I came across during my research, and I think it was that "under 35, normal results for both partners, medicated cycles have about a 10% success rate" that threw me off.

I'm 28. Unexplained infertility dx, DH's results have all been stellar. My RE hasn't given me exact numbers based on my stats, so maybe that's something I can ask about next week at my mid-cycle monitoring appointment. Also, maybe I should stop lumping myself into that 20% chance per month because that clearly wasn't the chance for us all along. That could be what's throwing me - I think I had a 20% chance and now it's diminished to 10%, but my chances were probably never as high as 20%.

longhornwino0907 · January 2015

Yes, @Remylove1011, that makes a lot more sense. Like my last comment said, I've been putting myself in the 20% category, and we were probably never there. So our chances probably are increased in our individual situation.

Remylove1011 · January 2015

longhornwino0907 said:

Yes, @Remylove1011, that makes a lot more sense. Like my last comment said, I've been putting myself in the 20% category, and we were probably never there. So our chances probably are increased in our individual situation.

Exacty. Most likely you weren't in the 20% chance group, so the IUI should increase your chances.

deelopi9 · January 2015

Each clinic is different depending on the number of patients, cycles, and diagnosis. It's always bothered me that most RE's don't keep track of success rates for IUI like they have to for IVF. That was one of the questions we asked our RE and they were not able to give us a clear definition. With unexplained diagnosis I can imagine the numbers are different since they can not track specifically what the underlining cause and this affects their success rate. I hope your RE can give you a better outlook.

BunnyBerry · January 2015

Without knowing results of any testing, a couple who has TTC (regular intercourse with reasonable timing) without success for 1 year has about a 10% chance of conceiving at any point in the 2nd year trying. For a couple who has tried for 2 years without success, they have only a 1-3% chance of success in the 3rd year of trying. MH and I tried over 5 years without success before testing, so at that point (without knowing the cause of IF), we had just over a 1% chance each month, but non-cumulative (meaning, 1% per year).

Once the RE identified our issues and started to treat them, we had close a 20% chance of success for the first 3 IUIs. After that failed, it put us in a category where we had a 10-15% cumulative chance over the next 3 IUIs with injects. But once the first injects cycle failed, our cumulative chance for the next two is 5-10% at the most. Without having tried IVF, we have a 65% of it working the first time with our diagnosis. If that's a failure, we have a 50% chance of it working the second time. After 2 failures with our diagnosis, it goes down a lot more.

My point in sharing this is, that if you have an infertility diagnosis, then you're looking at more like a 10% chance per year, so a 10% chance for a month of trying with IUI is a great improvement.

With a diagnosis of female factor only, related to ovulation, taking meds to induce ovulation plus IUI brings the chances back up to and even higher than the healthy population.

With an MFI diagnosis, if it's mild, IUI can bring chances up to that of a healthy couple per month and even slightly higher.

With unexplained, unfortunately there's more of a chance that it's something that requires more help than an IUI, so IUI success rates aren't as high. AMA also brings down success rates.

The numbers don't always work out neatly because often 2-3 tries of the same method have equal odds, and that comes from the fact that even if the treatment "worked," pregnancy does not always occur just due to chance (for example, a large proportion of eggs are just not able to be fertilized or divide or implant, even in healthy women, which is a large part of the reason that healthy people don't always get a BFP the first couple months of trying).

longhornwino0907 · January 2015

@BunnyBerry, thank you! That really shed a lot of light on the situation, I really appreciate it!

AnnaClaire256 · January 2015

@BunnyBerry‌ nailed it as always. Love that woman!

Since our only known issue is non-ovulatory cycles due to PCOS, our RE tells us that our chance with meds + IUI is actually slightly higher than the average healthy couple.

Shauntee · January 2015

@BunnyBerry‌, thank you for that amazing breakdown. I feel like I actually learned so much from your comment.

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