RISKS OF PREGNANCY

Getting pregnant through IVF comes with certain risks. This is partly because women using IVF are often older than those who conceive on their own without infertility treatment. In addition, the cause of the infertility itself may be to blame. There may be other risks linked to IVF that are not known at this time. Please see the table below for certain known risks. They are given as “adjusted odds ratios,” which describes the size of the risk compared to women who conceived on their own, adjusted for other factors, such as race, ethnicity and parity. For example, the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of 1.41 for gestational diabetes means it was seen 41% more often during pregnancy after IVF than in fertile women. The numbers in parentheses (the 95% confidence intervals) indicate the range of the risk; if the range includes 1, then the risk is not significantly elevated. For example, for gestational diabetes, the increased risk seen after IVF likely is somewhere between 15% lower and 134% higher.