Knocked Up Podcast - IVF success rates: What the Numbers Really Mean
www.yourivfsuccess.com.au has some great data around IVF and Australian results, but how do the experts view the data?
IVF success rates are often the first thing people search when starting fertility treatment. But what do those numbers actually tell us, and just as importantly, what do they miss?
In this episode, CREI fertility specialist Dr Raelia Lew unpacks the latest IVF success rate data, released in 2025. Dr Raelia explains how success is measured, why the data is always years behind, and how modern IVF practices like embryo freezing and banking are not properly reflected in the numbers patients see online.
If you are navigating IVF, choosing a clinic, or feeling confused or discouraged by statistics, this is an essential listen to help you understand the data with clarity and context.
TRANSCRIPT
Jordi Morrison: Hello and welcome to Knocked Up, the podcast about fertility and women's health. You are joined as always by me, Jordi Morrison, and Dr. Raelia Lew, CREI Fertility Specialist. Welcome, Raelia.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Thanks, Jordi.
Jordi Morrison: We are going to talk today about recent IVF success rates data. So we are referencing data that came out in 2025. Raelia, could you walk us through the latest IVF success rate data for 2025? What's looking good? Are there any surprising trends?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, sure. So the important thing to say is that this data that came out in 2025 is for the year 2023. So what happens in the way that IVF clinics report data, clinics report data every year with live birth outcomes. So that's people who go through an IVF cycle, get pregnant, and then subsequently nine months later have a baby. And the treatment happened in the calendar year that's under review. So the 2025 release is actually 2023 data.
Jordi Morrison: And the reason it took so long to get the data is because the babies were born in 2024.
Dr. Raelia Lew: That's right. And then, well, the last baby that was conceived, I guess in December 2023 would've been born towards the end of 2024. And then the data's collected, the numbers are crunched and the report is written. So it just takes a little bit of time and we are always looking retrospectively. But the data's looking good. I mean, the IVF success rates are reported, we're seeing with technology improving and ever increasing chance of getting pregnant through IVF, we're seeing more women freeze their eggs and we are seeing more egg warm cycles, and we're seeing more people get pregnant with their frozen embryos. It's interesting. I actually think that we need to revisit how we report IVF success data because of different trends in the way that we practice, and it's not necessarily reflected that accurately in the way the data is currently expressed because the systems that have been designed, they do reflect more the way IVF was undertaken in the past where most people had an egg collection and directly an embryo transfer and didn't necessarily undertake things like genetic testing or embryo banking, which we do very commonly today. So it's always a reflection when I look at the success rate data that maybe we need to modernize how we report data and how we really reflect on what it means.
Jordi Morrison: The point of reference is a website called yourIVFsuccess.com.au. So this website is publicly available. Who is the target of this website and who measures the data?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, so the data is collected by ANZARD. ANZARD is housed at the University of New South Wales, and it's funded through the federal government. ANZARD stands for the Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database. Your IVF success.com.au is kind of the patient facing of the ANZARD data and it breaks the clinics down to compare outcomes to national averages, just to ensure that patients understand that the clinics that they're choosing are reputable clinics. Now, of course, there's a lot of criticism that will come left, right, and center as to whether that is a relevant way to compare clinics, because as we know, there are many different ways IVF is practiced around Australia. So if you're a small clinic somewhere in a central metropolitan area that treats a low number of patients relative to the big cities, then because you don't treat as many patients, it's easier to skew data if you have a couple of outlier results, and it could skew in either way. So if you have an exceptional run and you get a lot of people pregnant, then a lot of people for you might be 10 patients different, but it might skew your data if the number of total patients is low. And likewise, you might just have a couple of patients who have bad outcomes potentially for non-clinic related reasons, maybe patient factors, but that might skew your data in the opposite direction. So it's a criticism. And sometimes on the other end of the spectrum, where you have clinics which focus more on low prognosis patients, so patients who have significant issues, maybe second opinions, maybe complex medical problems, advanced parental age being a more common subgroup in a practice, that can skew the data as well, independent from laboratory performance. So there are many, many criticisms of making comparisons to national average and some of them are very valid.
Jordi Morrison: You mentioned success is defined by live birth, that's by ANZARD and all similar platforms.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Usually. I mean, it's hard because patients want up to date data and as we discussed, when you talk about live birth, you're really reporting two years behind. So sometimes studies, medical studies report things like pregnancy rates, and they can be things like clinical pregnancy rates, which means someone is pregnant with a baby and they have an ultrasound and there's a heartbeat. Now, unfortunately, not every baby that gets to that point is going to make it all the way to birth. There might be some babies who have abnormalities that result in a miscarriage or a termination. And some babies are stillborn. There's babies for many reasons that might not make it to be counted as a live birth.
Jordi Morrison: Okay. What kind of cycles are included in these statistics? So like, there's first time IVF, there's, you've mentioned, you know, frozen embryo transfers where they come back years later, there's donor cycles. What's included in this data?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Look, it's actually, and again, it's another criticism of the data. I'll give you an example. I saw a patient this week who has had an amazing outcome. She's actually had three babies from one...
Jordi Morrison: Amazing. So this is where you did well, banking embryos back in the day.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, well actually I didn't do multiple cycles to bank. For her, it was male factor infertility, no female factor. One IVF cycle did the trick. She got pregnant with her first embryo transfer and had a baby. She got pregnant with her second embryo transfer and had a baby, and she's just come back and got pregnant with her third embryo transfer. So she's like the holy grail patient of IVF. By the way, she's still got frozen embryos. So I said to her, maybe you'll come back for a fourth baby. Anyway, so that's a very extreme outlier, but only one of her babies would've been counted in those IVF success rates with the current way that we count the data, because the way it's counted is giving birth from one cycle for one baby. And another thing is that it doesn't count if you bank embryos for someone and they come back and use an embryo more than three years after they made the embryo, which is super common.
Like a lot of my patients do that because when you think about it, they'll do their embryo banking cycle, which is a phrase, they might require a couple of embryo transfers to get pregnant. They're then pregnant for nine months. They then give birth to a newborn baby, which shocks our world, and they may breastfeed for a year. And then, you know, it's very rare that when you have a one-year-old, you come back again. Some people do, but usually people come back when their baby's two or three. So from when you first made that embryo, it's often more than three years. When a patient returns to use their embryos, those embryos don't count towards these pregnancy rates on your IVF success.
So if you have a baby more than three years after you made an embryo, it doesn't count. So you can argue, and I do argue, that we do need to rethink intellectually how these success rates are reported because we are just missing, we are not counting properly, we're not counting the babies we make, and we are not actually looking at how important it is to help people plan their families when they're younger and have better IVF prognosis. Because you'll see the success rates, they do look bad when women are stimulating again and again in their 40s because our prognosis per egg and per cycle is not as good then. So it is much better in terms of cumulative pregnancy rates as a specialist for your patients to bank embryos for them when they're younger. So when they come back and use them, they've got a better chance of success, and that's a universally understood fact, but it's not necessarily reflected at all in how we report success rates in ANZARD or your IVF success rates.
So I would say to patients, you know, take it with a grain of salt. It's good to know that your clinic is hitting the national average or above. Because of differences in clinics, both in geography and populations served, fluctuations can mean a lot or a little, but it's hard to tell based on how the data's reported. There's always error bars for that reason. So the data is reported with big error bars, and what that means is the real result we're confident falls somewhere within that bar. But the bars can be quite broad. So I personally don't look at it very much. I'm always happy that our data, as the medical director at Melbourne IVF, I'm always looking at our data year on year in our lab and trying to make sure that we are kicking goals and we are always achieving the highest possible success rate for our patients. And I'm always helping our doctors and scientists look into that and always investing in the best technologies to get the best success rates. And you do see that when we report our data, but again, I don't personally look too much at the your IVF success rate. It's more designed for patients to kind of get a little bit of an idea.
Jordi Morrison: So you mentioned Melbourne IVF there. So this data is reported and presented by clinic. Is there a uniform way that this data's collected and audited? How do we know? You've mentioned about different ages and patient cohorts and that skewing results. So how reliable is this information?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Well, like I said, it reflects two years in the past. So for example, if you look at Melbourne IVF data, it will be listed as 3/4 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, which is where Melbourne IVF used to be in our previous building. And currently we now have a brand new location at 36 Wellington Street in Collingwood. So that's a little bit confusing for patients because the data that is presented, and even the address on the website, is not where Melbourne IVF is today. Yeah, look, it's retrospective. I think maybe it's interesting. It gives patients an idea, you know, potentially what the success rates are in IVF in general, how, you know, long it takes somebody to get pregnant. Showing that, you know, pregnancy doesn't happen for every patient every time. That's really important for patients to understand in IVF going into it so that they set their expectations realistically. I'm super proud that Melbourne IVF punches well above the national average and, you know, year on year we've done that and we'll continue to do that through investment in technology and, despite our patient profile being very complex, we do that. So it's a great testament to the scientists and doctors at Melbourne IVF. But aside from that, our patients see the error bars, they see Melbourne IVF above the national average by a significant amount. And that's all they can really tell from that data on that website.
Jordi Morrison: Is there a reason why, I guess we've alluded to this a little bit throughout the episode, but are there specific reasons why success rates might vary significantly between clinics?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, definitely. So there's definitely big reasons why that happens. One is investment in technology. So the lab technology is important, you can do things in IVF better with good investment, so you'll always have better success rates as a general rule where there is investment, if you're treating a like population, like for like. Sometimes that's good in the data when people are not treating a like for like population. An example is in the country compared to in the city, people tend to have babies at a younger age, so quite often places in the country skew away from the 40 year olds having babies, more to the 20 year olds having babies. And the pathology within the IVF population is very different at those two ages. In your 20s, it's much more likely to be male factor or endometriosis, ovulation problems, and better egg quality, better sperm quality as a general rule despite those pathologies. Whereas in the older age brackets in the cities, we are more likely to see more patients who, although this is a stereotype, it's actually true, have just planned their family later in life for various reasons. And they may be facing infertility relating to a constellation of issues, but one of those issues is age and egg quality and sperm quality. So it's a different population of people. So what we often do in IVF success rates is we benchmark a certain group, and a good prognosis patient group when we're comparing labs with each other, that allows us to do more accurate comparison.
Jordi Morrison: You've mentioned that Melbourne IVF perform above the national average. I know you've alluded to this, but could you explain to us why their results are so good?
Dr. Raelia Lew: Our results are excellent because we recruit expert specialists to our unit. We set the bar high for our specialists. Many of our specialists are CREI trained, and many of our specialists have special interest in other areas, and their practices will skew to particular interest areas. So, for example, some of our IVF specialists have a strong interest in endometriosis and endometriosis surgery. Some have a strong interest in genetics. We have a broad church of many different specialists within our group, and we put our heads together for complex cases. It's a very collegial group in that way. We have David Gardner, who is an absolute superstar of the IVF world, as our scientific director of our laboratory, and we are constantly innovating and keeping abreast of technology and research. And we have investment. We are supported to create really a top tier laboratory environment for our patients, both in our infrastructure and in our laboratory setup. We offer our patients their best chance of getting pregnant through IVF.
Jordi Morrison: If you are just starting out your fertility journey and you are trying to decide on your IVF specialist, how can using a website like yourIVFsuccess.com.au help you?
Dr. Raelia Lew: I don't really think that helps particularly much in choosing an IVF specialist for you. The factors that people consider, I mean, many patients do travel for treatment. I have patients who've come to me from other countries. I'm currently treating a patient who's come to see me from New Zealand, for example. But for many patients, locality is important. They'll choose a doctor in their city where they live.
Jordi Morrison: Yeah, well, there's a few appointments. It's not like you go once, so it needs to be convenient.
Dr. Raelia Lew: Yeah, yeah. So there's an element of that. So if I live in Melbourne, most of the time I'm not going to choose an IVF doctor in Sydney, and you know, vice versa, unless there are special considerations. In terms of my patient coming from overseas, it's not a first opinion that she's coming for, it's a second or third opinion. So she's particularly sought my assistance and I'm very flattered that she's come to see me and hopefully I help her.
In terms of expertise, patients might research the expertise of their specialists. Obviously a CREI subspecialist has been trained to the highest level of IVF and fertility practice and often it is ideal to see a CREI specialist in IVF. But I also acknowledge that not everywhere in Australia do people have access to a CREI specialist. Spoiled for choice in Melbourne and Sydney, in other places not so much. And an IVF doctor who's not a CREI specialist can gain great expertise over time and self-directed learning and clinical experience. But it is a qualification required for medical directors of IVF units. And we train our CREI doctors to be the best IVF specialists possible that they can be.
In terms of personality, we are all human beings and we do have different personalities and we have different approaches. And sometimes you'll choose a doctor because you feel an affinity with their personality or how they present. Sometimes you'll feel a cultural affinity. Maybe they speak a language that you speak as your first language that's not English. We might choose a specialist for various reasons. But of course, if you can, choosing a specialist affiliated with a top tier IVF unit gives you the best of both worlds, specialist expertise and preparation for IVF, the conduct of the IVF itself, and also the laboratory, which does contribute to success rates significantly.
Some people will choose because of cost and, you know, it's a privilege to work at Melbourne IVF, but I acknowledge that it's a private IVF sector unit. One of the reasons that we are able to present our patients with the highest level of technology is because they do pay for it. They contribute to it above and beyond what is provided by virtue of the Medicare rebate alone. And clinics that have to function on Medicare rebate alone can't provide those services. They just can't afford to. So that's also a factor for many people that we need to acknowledge. And there's public IVF as well nowadays, where patients are not out of pocket, but they may have to wait and they have a limited number of treatment attempts that would be covered in the public, after which they can access private care should they require more treatments to get pregnant.
Jordi Morrison: I am just going to look at the women's data just for me. Oh, there you go. No information for the Women's Health Melbourne. All right. Thank you, Raelia. That was really interesting. Or do you want to say something?
Dr. Raelia Lew: I can say you'll notice that on your IVF success rate, there's no public clinic information. It is just because of the fact that we discussed that it's retrospective data that's reported and the public IVF has not been around long enough to have the data reported.
Jordi Morrison: Thank you, Raelia.
Hosted by Dr Raelia Lew and Jordi Morrison
Dr Raelia Lew is a RANZCOG Board Certified CREI Fertility specialist, Gynaecologist and the Director of Women’s Health Melbourne.
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