Assisted reproductive technology in Australia and New Zealand 2013

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) is a group of procedures that involve the in vitro (outside of body) handling of human oocytes (eggs) and sperm or embryos for the purposes of establishing a pregnancy. Each ART treatment involves a number of stages and is generally referred to as an ART treatment cycle. The embryos transferred to a women can either originate from the cycle in which they were created (fresh cycle) or be frozen and thawed before transfer (thaw cycle).

There were 71,516 ART treatment cycles reported from Australian and New Zealand clinics in 2013 (66,143 and 5,373 respectively) representing a 1.9% increase in Australia and 3.8% increase in New Zealand on 2012. This represented 13.7 cycles per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15–44 years) in Australia, compared with 5.9 cycles per 1,000 women of reproductive age in New Zealand. Women used their own oocytes or embryos (autologous cycles) in 95.1% of treatments. Embryos that had been frozen and thawed where used in 36.6% of autologous cycles.

There were 37,192 women who undertook 67,980 autologous fresh and/or thaw cycles in Australia and New Zealand in 2013. On average, 1.8 fresh and/or thaw cycles per woman were undertaken, with more cycles per woman in Australia (1.9 cycles per woman) than in New Zealand (1.5 cycles per woman). The number of cycles where PGD was performed increased from 2,294 in 2012 to 2,740 in 2013 (19.4% increase), representing 4.4% of cycles in which embryos were created or thawed.