1- Each woman is born with a certain set of ovarian reserves and starting with puberty, hundreds of potential oocytes are lost during a menstrual cycle. The reserves keep declining as the age of the woman advances and eventually the reserve finishes once the woman reaches menopause. The ovarian function tends to fall below 20-25% of its starting numbers at the age of 35, and beyond the age of 40, chances of pregnancy with own eggs become very slim. Having a cut-off age for IVF treatment where the patient uses her own eggs avoids a very high risk of a negative treatment outcome and disappointment.
2- Having a cut-off age means not admitting patients who are not likely to succeed, which means the fertility clinic can keep its success rates high.
Whether we agree with this or not is not the main point. The main point is, should there be a cut-off age for trying with your own eggs? The answer is not so simple. Patients may not be willing to give up on their eggs just yet regardless of what the statistics might be saying. If there is a 1% chance, it means 1 in every 100 women will achieve success with treatment. While unfortunately 99 others won’t be so lucky.
When it comes to using your own eggs, our clinic does not subscribe into age limitations. However, we make sure that you are well-informed about likely outcomes so that you can make your decision accordingly. For maximizing success wheh using your own eggs beyond a certain age, we have additional methods such as “Cytoplasmic IVF Treatment” that can potentially add a few percentages to your success statistics.
While we do not have an advertised age limit, we do not recommend IVF treatment using own eggs after the age of 47, which is the age of the oldest reported IVF pregnancy worldwide.
For more information on our recommendations for patients over 50 years of age, using donor eggs, please see our “IVF over 50” section.
