What is natural cycle IVF?

One of the other approaches in IVF, which in a sense isn't part of the next generation, it's part of the old generation, but it's an approach that everybody would hope would be a way forward and that's to do something more naturally. We hear of natural cycle IVF, we hear of mild stimulation IVF. In fact, natural cycle IVF was the actual IVF process that produced the world's first IVF baby, Louise Brown. So back in those very early days, I did many hundreds of natural cycle IVFs. And indeed there was a clinic set up many years ago. It's now our CARE Sheffield clinic, but before it was CARE Sheffield, it was a clinic absolutely designed to only treat women with natural cycle IVF. I think if we can do anything less invasively, even minimise the amount of drugs we give a woman, and treat couples as naturally as possible, it would be great if that were the best way forward. We now know, and we've known it for decades, that natural cycle IVF success rates are very poor indeed they're very low. They're roundabout, you're lucky if you get a 10% live birth rate, it's pretty low. But of course it's less invasive because we don't take drugs, we don't give drugs to the patient when it's pure natural cycle IVF. The chances are you only get one egg. So it also means that if you wanted to have a pool of embryos frozen, you wouldn't have that either. You'd have to go through another cycle. The question is, is it beneficial for some couples? Clearly it's much less efficient. But if you're comparing it to couples who fail on conventional IVF, then maybe it has some advantages, and we do natural cycle IVF, but it's only applicable to very few patients. So although it's a striving for people to have things naturally, they need to understand very clearly, what are my likely chances of success? And in most couples it's around about 6% live birth rate. It can get up to 10% live birth rate in a few. But it's very low. So you have to measure that against the more invasive conventional type of IVF. And then there's somewhere in between, which is called the mild stimulation. So again, it's about directing what you do to the individual couple with enough precision to give them not just the best chance of success, but the right and appropriate information for them to make their decision with you and with us on what is best for them. So natural cycle IVF may be an option, but it may be the worst option for a particular couple because they may need to go through it five or six times before they either abandon it or succeed. If hey have to abandon it, they may be 12 months older, which is probably much worse in their situation. Lots of things to weigh up.