An egg donor donates her eggs to an infertile woman to fertilize with the male partner of the intended mother to create good quality embryos for transferring into the intended mother’s uterus for optimal growth. Following are the indications for the requirement of egg donation:
- The intended mother’s age is more than 40 years with diminishing fertility due to the declining quality and quantity of her eggs.
- The intended mother has decreased ovarian reserve before reaching their advanced age (>40 years).
- Early-onset of menopause occurring at the age of 20s or 30s requires donor eggs to grow her family.
- Some women have congenital absences of ovaries or missing other reproductive organs.
- Damaging of reproductive organs due to occurring of certain diseases or surgical removal of chemotherapeutic or radiotherapy interventions because of cancer treatment.
- A genetic disorder that has the probability to pass on to the next generation can be overcome by using healthy donor eggs.
- Apart from these issues, some women experience repeated failure of IVF for an unexplained reason.
Egg donation is an effective treatment for women who have the above-mentioned indications and unable to solve IVF failure by using their eggs.
Medical science advancing and provide the option to preserve their fertility by opting for egg cryopreservation technique. Nowadays, those who want to donate their cryopreserved eggs can do that to help another infertile woman. Medical practice has shown that using cryopreserved eggs as an egg donation provides better treatment outcomes than fresh egg donation. Cryopreserved egg donation can solve many associated challenges like:
- Insufficient healthy eggs obtain after the retrieval process
- Synchronization difficulties
- Long waiting period
- Lack of quarantine measures
Nowadays, very efficient improvements are observed in egg cryopreservation that increases the egg donation and IVF success rate. However, egg donation through opting for cryopreserved eggs is rare but provides an encouraging result. Recently, many oocyte cryobank is established in Western countries because of many advantages.
But before you should opt for preserve eggs as an egg donation, certain factors need to consider. Like which method was followed to cryopreserve the donor eggs, as vitrification is the most successful method. It provides high survival rates (90%) of donor oocytes and equivalent fertilization, embryo development, implantation, and pregnancy rates as compared to other methods including traditional (fresh) egg donation. Following are certain advantages associated with using cryopreserved egg as a donor egg.
- Waiting time is less, as synchronization between the donor and recipient step is omitted. But in the fresh egg donation process, this synchronization is essential and that takes time.
- The time requirement for matching between the donor and recipient is also not required in the case of the cryopreserved egg donation process. However, matching between the donor and recipient in fresh donation is a difficult job.
- The development of an effective oocyte cryopreservation technique makes it possible to cryo-store donor as well as non-donor eggs with properly maintaining their viability. These viable eggs can be used whenever a requirement arises. Cryobank facility can manage the harmony between demand and supply.
Observational studies showed the great success of Cryobank facilities. Case studies demonstrated that the survival rate of the cryopreserved egg is high. It is comparable with fresh egg donation in terms of fertilization, embryo development, implantation, and pregnancy rates.
Experts also suggested that opting for cryo-preserved eggs as a donor egg is more cost-effective, easy to perform, potentially safer because of six months or more quarantine period to check the infectious diseases in the donors.
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