For all those couples who have been trying in vain to conceive for over a year or two, in vitro fertilization is a boon. But the IVF procedure can prove to be an expensive as well as a physically difficult procedure. It is also agonizing and emotionally exhausting at the same time. All this makes the decision, to go through IVF without the certainty of the results, very difficult.

On Tuesday, Stanford University researchers announced that, in very near future, they will be able to accurately predict if in vitro fertilization will result in pregnancy, thus making it easier for the couples to decide upon the procedure.

The Researchers led by Stanford University Medical Center assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Mylene Yao, MD, already found a 70% accuracy rate in predicting whether a woman who has undergone IVF will become pregnant.

In vitro fertilization is the process in which egg cells are fertilized outside the mother’s body. There are various steps involved in combining the egg and sperm during IVF; ultimately an embryo is created and transferred into the mother’s womb. These steps are called cycles.

The researchers scrutinized 665 cycles of in vitro fertilization in women under age 45. Some 4,144 embryos were created. Normally, each IVF cycle produces five to 12 embryos.

According to Yao and his fellow researchers, there are four factors which are the strongest predictors of pregnancy. They are-

    1) Total number of embryos.

    2) Number of 8-celled embryos.

    3) Percentage of embryos that stopped dividing and died.

    4) The level of the woman's follicle-stimulating hormone or (FSH). This hormone estimates how well the ovaries are working.

Yao’s team is planning to further study and analyze these factors so that in near future they could provide infertile couples with some much-needed guidance in making a very difficult decision.