Surrogacy Statistics
Numbers, math, statistics…You either love them or hate them! They are important for tracking success and can be comforting (or not!) for topics you are interested in. Today we are exploring stats on surrogacy and using a gestational carrier.
If you are familiar with surrogacy, I’m sure you’ve heard of Baby M and the legal mess associated with that in 1986. This was the first, well … public, knowledge of the use of a Gestational Carrier. The CDC submitted their first report to Congress in 1997 titled “Assisted Reproductive Technology Success Rates: National Summary and Fertility Clinic Reports”. That means today is 32 years from the first “known” Gestational Carrier, and 21 years since the first report to Congress on ART success rates. In the grand scheme of things, Gestational Surrogacy and the technology to make it happen is fairly new. The CDC now has a National ART Surveillance Program to help us regulate and keep track of the stats. https://www.cdc.gov/art/key-findings/gestational-carriers.html “Between 1999 and 2013, about 2% (30,927) of all assisted reproductive technology cycles used a gestational carrier. The number of gestational carrier cycles increased from 727 (1.0%) in 1999 to 3,432 (2.5%) in 2013.” Also, “Approximately 16% of intended parents using a gestational carrier were not US residents.” I can’t wait to see what the numbers would be in the more recent years!
You may be curious as to what the age of those gestational carriers were, according to https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(16)61057-9/fulltext on Table 1 from 2009-2013, 24.9% under age 30, 33.4% ages 30 to 34, 6.2% ages 35-37, 7% ages 38 to 40, 4% ages 41-43, 2% ages 44 and older with 34.2% of the data missing. Table 1 also shows the number of embryos transferred for ART treatment procedures with 1 embryo transferred at 21.5%, 2 at 60.4%, 3 at 13.6%, and 4 and above 4.6%. Anecdotally, many carriers and RE’s seem to be shifting preference to one embryo transfer in recent years, so it will be interesting to see how the numbers update 4 to 5 years later. How the number of embryos transferred relates to multiple birth numbers and implantation rates is also worth exploring. Here are the numbers for 2009-2013 according to https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(16)61057-9/fulltext on Table 2, implantation rate among transfers for Gestational Carrier with fresh nondonor ooctyes was 30.3%, resulting in 41.5% live births, 30.3% being multiple live births. This in comparison to implantation rate among transfers for Gestational Carrier with fresh donor ooctyes was 53.3%, resulting in 60.5% live births, 42.5% being multiple live births. The Nongestational carrier numbers are slightly lower than those of a gestational carrier.
What about Colorado? On https://nccd.cdc.gov/drh_art/rdPage.aspx?rdReport=DRH_ART.ClinicsList&SubTopic=&State=CO&Zip=&Distance=50 8 clinics were found, on this site you can access each clinics individual numbers from 2015. The one disclaimer is concerning the limited data related to using a gestational carrier, the information contained in the chart is more related to all different types of ART cycle.
Whether you like numbers or not, it is always good to compare and see where things stand. We can’t wait for when the next report becomes available! Seeing how trends and preferences change is always interesting, even helping us figure out which situations are the most successful moving forward.
Special thank you to Amanda Armstrong, Business Reference Collection Specialist at the Denver Public Library for helping find these statistics.