Objective: To assess the probability of live birth after three available in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI) cycles.
Design: Retrospective, observational study.
Setting: University hospital.
Patient(s): Nine hundred seventy-four couples who started their first conventional IVF or ICSI cycle between January 1996 and December 1997. A total of 1985 stimulated cycles were initiated.
Intervention(s): Analysis of the cumulative live birth rate using the life-table approach with and without taking dropouts into account.
Main outcome measure(s): Cumulative live birth rate.
Result(s): The overall cumulative live birth rate after three completed stimulated cycles (including freezing/thawing cycles) was 65.5% with an "optimistic" approach. For the "realistic" and "pessimistic" approaches the corresponding figures were 63.1% and 55.5%, respectively. Unexpectedly, 65% of couples not achieving a live birth interrupted the full treatment program of three cycles.
Conclusion(s): The cumulative live birth rate gives the couple a more accurate prognosis of achieving a live birth after IVF/ICSI than the statistics usually provided. With the "realistic" estimation, 63% of the couples achieved childbirth after three available conventional IVF or ICSI cycles. Further studies are required to investigate the high drop-out rate.