Infertility Fact Sheet 

American Society for Reproductive Medicine 1997

• Infertility affects 6.1 million American women and their partners, about 10% of the reproductive age population.

• Infertility is a disease of the reproductive system that affects the male or female with almost equal frequency.

• Recent improvements in medication, microsurgery, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques make pregnancy possible for more than half of the couples pursuing treatments.

• 25% of infertile couples have more than one factor that contributes to their infertility.

• In approximately 40% of infertile couples, the male partner is either the sole cause or a contributing cause of infertility.

• Tubal blockage and/or peritoneal factors account for approximately 35% of all female infertility problems.

• Irregular or abnormal ovulation accounts for approximately 25% of all female infertility cases.

• Endometriosis is found in about 35% of infertile women who have laparoscopy as part of their infertility work-up.

• Approximately 20% of couples who have a complete work-up are diagnosed with unexplained infertility because no specific cause is identified.

• IVF is a method of assisted reproduction in which a man's sperm and the woman's egg are combined in a laboratory dish, where fertilization occurs. The resulting embryo is then transferred to the uterus to develop naturally. Usually, two to four embryos are transferred with each cycle.

• Other techniques of assisted reproduction include gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), IVF with donor eggs, donor sperm, and donor embryos, and micromanipulation of eggs and embryos.

• There are more than 70,000 babies born in the United States as a result of all assisted reproductive technologies (ART),

• including 45,000 as a result of IVF.

• According to the most recent statistics (1995), the success rates of ART procedures are as follows:

  • IVF - 22.3% live birth per egg retrieval

  • GIFT - 26.8% live birth per egg retrieval

  • ZIFT - 27.7% live birth per egg retrieval

source: http://www.asrm.org/Patients/FactSheets/Infertility-Fact.pdf 21sep02
American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 12009 Montgomery Hwy., Birmingham, AL 35216-2809

More fact sheets: http://www.asrm.org/Patients/FactSheets/fact.html