The Average IVF Patient

The average IVF patient is about 35 years old and had been trying to conceive for about a year. The average AMH value is 3 ng/mL (this corresponds to an antral follicle count, or AFC, of 20).

A typical workup for a couple with a female partner with regular monthly cycles will include a transvaginal ultrasound, uterine cavity and tubal patency evaluation with a saline sonogram (SIS) or hysterosalpingogram (HSG), and a semen analysis. Typically a TSH (thyroid test) could be checked if not done in the last few years.

Using medications such as letrozole (typically dosed at 5mg by mouth on days 3 to 7 of the menstrual cycle) with intrauterine insemination (washing the sperm and placing it in the uterus) could be a good starting treatment if all testing is normal. This will have about a 15% pregnancy rate with 5-10% of those pregnancies being multiple gestations.

Another option would be IVF with single embryo transfer which would have about a 60% live birth rate per oocyte (egg) retrieval. This means there would be a 60% chance of having at least 1 live birth from one of the embryos created from one of the eggs from a single egg retrieval procedure.