Assisted conception, Australia and New Zealand 2000 and 2001

Assisted conception Australia and New Zealand 2000 and 2001 is the seventh report on the use of assisted reproduction technology (ART) in Australia and New Zealand.

Highlights

• During 2001, 28,797 treatment cycles were performed in Australia and New Zealand. There were 11,338 IVF transfer cycles, 13,836 ICSI transfer cycles and 341 GIFT transfer cycles.
• When all techniques of assisted conception are included together, the viable pregnancy rate increased from 13.0 per 100 embryos/gametes transfer cycles in 1992 to 20.6 in 2001.
• Pregnancy rates of different methods of treatments vary within and between individual IVF or GIFT units. The average clinical pregnancy rate (per 100 oocyte retrieval cycles) of IVF treatment using fresh embryos achieved by the most successful 25%of all units increased from 24.9% in 1998 to 34.4% in 2001.
• In 2001, more than four in five assisted conception treatment cycles transferred one or two embryos/oocytes.
• In 2000, the majority (72.3%) of pregnant women after assisted conception treatment were aged 30 to 39 years. The average age of all women who gave birth after assisted conception treatment was 33.6 years, 4.6 years older than average age (29.0) of Australian mothers in 2000.
• There were 945 (22.1%) multiple pregnancies in 2000. Twin pregnancies occurred in 21.1% of all pregnancies. Triplet and other higher order pregnancies occurred in 1.0%. GIFT treatment had the highest incidence (28.1%) of multiple pregnancies.
• Delivery by caesarean section was higher among assisted conception pregnancies. There were 1,991 (46.7%) reported caesarean deliveries in 2000. The caesarean rate was 68.5% in twin pregnancies and 95.2% in triplet pregnancies.
• In 2000, there were 5,466 pregnancies following assisted conception treatments in Australia and New Zealand.
• In 2000, there were 4,285 confinements of women of 20 weeks or more gestation following assisted conception in Australia and New Zealand. Of those 4,285 confinements, 3,901 were in Australia and 378 in New Zealand, an increase of 10.9% and 14.2% respectively from 1999.
• In 2000, there were 5,275 live births and fetal deaths from assisted conception. The fetal death rate was 1%, the lowest reported in the series. Of those births, 4,801 infants were born in Australia accounting for 1.9% of all births in 2000.
• In 2000 there were 109 reported perinatal deaths among births after assisted conception. Perinatal death rates have declined from 31.5 per 1,000 relevant births in 1991 to 20.7 per 1,000 relevant births in 2000. The perinatal death rate was about 2.5 times the overall perinatal death rate (8.3 per 1,000 relevant births) in Australia in 2000. Perinatal death rates are higher for multiple births than for singleton births. Perinatal death rate for twins was 34.3 per 1,000 relevant births and for triplets was 62.0 per 1,000 relevant births, compared with 11.7 per 1,000 relevant births in singletons in 2001.