Cost and Success Rates of IVF in India

We generally say at least 3 to 4 months of contraception should be used, and conception should not happen within that window.

There are now government of India guidelines on this. Strictly by those guidelines it is 50 for the woman and 55 for the man, though this used to be more liberal — we used to see people at 60–65 also getting IVF done, before the ethical question of who will care for the children led to the cutoff being tightened.

After adhesiolysis we give a combination of estrogen throughout the cycle and progesterone added in the last 14 days, and it takes about 3 months for regeneration, confirmed with transvaginal sonography for endometrial thickness before and after. Many patients start to show improvement even after about a month and a half, where the scarring and adhesions are not so severe that they have permanently damaged the endometrium.

A lot of times when an HSG is done without sedation, the patient tenses up so much that there is a tubal spasm, which can appear as a bilateral proximal tubal blockage. One good approach is to give the patient an anti-spasmodic before the procedure, or do it with a little sedation, which removes many of these false positives. But if it still appears to be a genuine proximal blockage in both tubes, it's better to go directly for a diagnostic hysterolaparoscopy with chromopertubation, since that lets you directly visualise the tubes — and most patients also find repeating an HSG very painful.

Success rates of IVF in good centres are now around 60%. Cost depends on the kind of IVF procedure required — sometimes an ICSI procedure, sometimes donor eggs are needed — but it would typically start around 3 to 4 lakh rupees, roughly $3,200 to $4,500 per cycle.

Success rates have improved from around 40 to 50% in earlier years to around 60%, and up to 70% at the very best centres, driven by more robust protocols and medications.

No. Nobody, anywhere in the world including the West, can honestly guarantee success rates of 90% or higher, and patients should be wary of marketing claims suggesting otherwise.

Generally yes. Subsequent cycles, particularly those using frozen embryos rather than a fresh egg retrieval, are typically less expensive than the first cycle, though surgery costs vary depending on complexity and hospital.

Doctors have a responsibility to counter marketing-driven hype with consistent, evidence-based counselling grounded in published protocols and clinical trial data, so patients form realistic expectations.