What is egg donation?
Egg donation is the use of egg cells taken from young and healthy donors and used by patients who have entered menopause or early menopause due to their age or who are unable to achieve a healthy pregnancy with their own eggs.
Can you explain the process?
If the expectant mother still has her own period, treatment is started on the 2nd or 3rd day of her period, if she has already entered the menopause, she has been given hormone pills so that she will have her period and will be on the 2nd or 3rd day the treatment started. During this treatment, she was given pills containing estrogen. The aim is to thicken the lining of the uterus and prepare it for pregnancy. 5 days before the transfer, drugs containing progesterone are used to support pregnancy. All of these drugs continue after the embryo transfer process until the day of the pregnancy test.
Which initial tests needs to be done ?
Chromosome analysis
Serological examinations such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis
Alpha and beta thalassemia, sickle cell anemia.
What are the differences from IVF treatment?
In normal IVF treatment, various hormone injections are given to the patient and the development of egg cells is ensured and these eggs are collected when they reach a certain maturity and are fertilized with sperm cells of the husband by the ICSI process and embryos are obtained.
In egg donation cases, this treatment is applied to the egg donor and fertilization is provided with the sperm of the husband of the recipient mother. The uterine lining of the expectant mother is thickened with estrogene hormone pills or bands.
Who should consider donation? Who is not eligible ?
Women who:
entered the menopause or the premature menopause
still want to have children at an advanced age
can no longer produce eggs because of a medical treatment such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy
have especially X chromosomal dominant hereditary diseases
have several unsuccessful attempts of normal IVF treatment with her own egg cells
Any woman with an anatomically normal uterus in normal shape and size is suitable for pregnancy thus suitable for egg donation treatment.
How is the donor match done? What should be considered? Do you have egg-sperm-embryo bank?
The blood groups, skin colour, eye colour and hair colour of the recipient mother and her husband must be appropriate to the donor’s group and phenotype characteristics.
As a sperm bank, we work together with CRYO’S International Sperm Bank in Denmark.
We don’t have an egg bank. For egg donation cases we work with donors from whom the fresh egg cells are removed.
Donor egg treatment is made with frozen eggs or fresh eggs?
We always prefer to use fresh eggs for every case. Because the pregnancy rates for fresh egg donation are 80-85%. In very rare cases we use frozen donor eggs where our pregnancy rate is 70%
But sometimes, if there are problems with the arrival of patients from abroad, which can be experienced frequently during this pandemic period, of course we also use frozen eggs in such cases and our pregnancy rate is around 70%
Is there a limit on the number of eggs used in the treatment?
We use 10 mature egg cells for each patient. 5 days after the egg cells are fertilized, the embryo transfer is carried out and the remaining embryos are frozen and stored especially for this patient for possible future use.
Can the donor and the receiving family see each other? Is there a transfer of information? What information can be given to receiving family ?
We do not share any private information about the donor, other than information such as blood group, phenotype characteristics, education status with the family, but we do not introduce them to each other. It is strictly forbidden because of legal, psychological and ethical reasons.
Can the family bring their own donor? What are the conditions?
If the donor meets the criteria set by the World Health Organization, the family can bring her. However, we do not recommend this due to legal issues that may arise in the future.
In embryo transfer, do the eggs come from the same woman, or are the embryos created from different women?
In principle, we use only one donor for each recipient patient. However, some patients may wish to use two donors. There is no legal obstacle in this regard.
In all donation procedures, whether egg, embryo, sperm, are pre-biopsied by the clinic for hereditary disorders?
Since our donors are usually 20-25 years old, young and chromosomally healthy women, we do not apply PGD in every patient. However, PGD can sometimes be inevitable if there are some known genetic diseases in the husband or in his family of the recipient patient.
What tests should be done in donors?
We perform blood type, complete blood count, coagulation tests, serological tests such as HIV, HBV, HCV, syphilis, thalassemia and chromosome analysis tests in donors.
Huge thanks to Dr Omer from IVF Turkey for answering our questions
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