Egg donation has become the solution for many women who cannot use their own eggs to have children.
Despite it being one of the most recent techniques of Reproductive Medicine, it is being ranked among one of the best answers for many women who want to experience the joy of motherhood. In vitro fertilization with donor eggs enables any woman to get pregnant, regardless of her age, the absence of ovaries or ovarian failure. The excellent results obtained by this assisted reproduction technique opens up a wide range of possibilities for the female population. The egg donation is used in the absence of ovaries, ovarian failure due to menopause or when the egg quality is very low even if the ovaries still work, basically from the chromosomal point of view. These circumstances are the cause of many in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles failures.
Genotype and phenotype compatibility
The donor has a key role in egg donation treatment. Egg donation is a process that is governed by law and strict medical selection criteria has to be followed to guarantee the compatibility and the maximum genotype and phenotype affinity.
The egg donor has to be of legal age and younger than 35, which guarantees the maximum egg quality, and she has to undergo various medical and psychological tests to determine her state of health and her family medical history.
At the fertility centers of the UR International Group we carry out a thorough examination to determine the hormone status of the young woman who is donating her gametes, as well as to make sure she doesn’t have any possible infectious diseases such as hepatitis, HIV, syphilis, etc. Karyotyping is another basic test that can be carried out to make sure there is the right number of chromosomes in the eggs, which chromosomally speaking, guarantees oocytes that are free of any chromosomal abnormalities that might be passed on to the descendants.
The egg donor gives her consent to the egg donation by means of signing a legal document, where she also states that she waives the right to know the identity of the recipient. As for the recipient, she is only allowed to know essential information about the donor, such as the basic medical history, physical features, age and blood group, so that the anonymity is maintained at all times. To find the most compatible profiles we use the Fenomacht technique, which is a matching or pairing process between the donor and the recipient to obtain maximum similarity between the physical features of both.
Coordinating cycles
The egg donation process with fresh eggs takes about two and a half months, which is enough time to find the donor and coordinate the cycles between the donor and the recipient. It is a simple process and it is usually a very positive experience, with a high success rate of almost 70%. Thanks to the high probabilities of this assisted reproduction treatment, at our centers we advocate the transfer of just one embryo, because the other quality embryos obtained in the same cycle can be frozen, to have more childrenin the future.
Nowadays egg donation has become one of the most popular assisted reproduction techniques, it is even catching up with In Vitro Fertilization with a woman’s own eggs. The progress of society, the new life styles and women going into the job market are the main reasons why motherhood has taken second place. The eggs that are donated by a young woman, who is healthy and fertile, mean that another woman’s dreams of being a mother can come true even if she has gone past the ideal time set by her biological clock to conceive.
