Medically + Economically You Should Avoid IUI at Age 38
Medically and Economically you should void IUI at age 38 or older. Couples facing difficulty conceiving and after completing a fertility workup, they have three general fertility treatment options. Regular intercourse, ovarian stimulation with oral medications (clomid or letrozole) or injection medications followed by IUI (COH-IUI) or IVF.
The chance for pregnancy is very low with COH-IUI that you may as well just try with intercourse. The likely cause is production of a small number of eggs with these stimulation protocols, lowering the chance of encountering a chromosomally normal eggs. IUI in itself slightly increases the pregnancy rate but the main benefit in fertility treatment is produced through ovarian stimulation and recruitment of multiple eggs.
On the other hand, IVF carries a very good chance for getting pregnant. If not ready for fertility treatment just have regular intercourse. If ready, proceed directly to IVF as you will realize much higher success rate and save also on treatment with minimal yield (IUI). Here is a synopsis of published studies (asrm.org).
Traditional egg reserve tests
Women who initiated infertility treatment with FSH of 10 to 15 mIU/mL and E >40 pg/mL on day 3 testing were unlikely to achieve live birth after COH-IUI treatment. In two well designed studies on 603 patients contributing 2,717 total cycles, no live births occurred during COH-IUI. IVF still afforded these patients a reasonable chance of success (6/18 couples, 6/40 cycles, 33.3% live-birth rate per couple).
Female Age
Age ≥ 38 to 42y:
The cumulative clinical pregnancy rates per couple after the first two cycles of CC/IUI, FSH/IUI, or immediate IVF were 21.6%, 17.3%, and 49.0%, respectively. After all treatments, 110 (71.4%) of 154 couples had conceived a clinically recognized pregnancy, and 46.1% had delivered at least one live-born baby; 84.2% of all live-born infants resulting from treatment were achieved via IVF. There were 36% fewer treatment cycles in the IVF arm compared with either COH/IUI arm. Also couples conceived a pregnancy leading to a live birth after fewer treatment cycles.
Other Fertility and Social Factors to consider
Medically + Economically you should avoid IUI at age 38
FORTTAll being equal, for modern couples, the most humane approach is to get them pregnant before the short favorable window of reasonable number and quality of eggs wane. No to do so means letting them enter the into the more difficult phase of final reproductive years. Treatment ssuccess drops in late reproductive years to a single digit and they jeopardize their chance of having a baby.











