The
majority of
IVF patients in need for Donor's Egg prefer physical resemblance with
the Donor, so that the baby "looks like mom and dad".
There is another remarkable tendency: to search for an Egg Donor of
exceptional beauty and brains. Sounds like fairy tale?
It is pretty natural and understandable. All of us
want our off springs to be smart and good looking mostly because
"looks" are identified as major key to success in life for both men and
women. It is not surprising that demand for beautiful college
women who are willing to donate their oocytes is very high.
It is very important to understand that not all women, even young
enough to donate, will make good donors. Since Egg Donation
process requires a lot of financial resources from the recipient's
part, it always makes sense to predict if your donor will make it.
The general consideration is
Donor's
Age. The ideal donor is a
young women between the age of
21 and
28.
Some clinics allow donors to be up to 32 years old.
However, the first fertility breakdown occurs at 28.
Egg
Donor's Health and
Family
Medical History is
another selection criteria
for many recipients.
Egg Donor is expected to be free from
Sexually
Transmitted
Diseases.
STD testing, including AIDS/HIV is a routine screening
requirements.
Despite our general assumption that all women under the age of 30-32
have good quality of oocytes in large numbers, it is only an assumption
and needs to be proven. You need to make sure that your
Donor has good
ovarian
reserve by asking
your doctor to perform
antral
follicle count
test *
*Antral
follicle test is an ultrasound test performed at day 2-3 of women's
menstrual period to find out the number of follicles in the
donor's ovaries
Before
you
spend $15000-25000 for your IVF cycle,
review our article
"Ovarian
Reserve" to understand
age
and fertility,
ovarian
reserve, and
antral
follicle count.
Pic 1. ( Source: Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago, 2004.) shows
that even for young women under the age of 35, IVF success is highest
when Antral follicle test shows 15-26 follicles in both ovaries.
For lower numbers, IVF success rate is lower. For
higher numbers, IVF success is also lower because the oocytes retrieved
will be smaller and fertilization rate will be also lower.
So your
Ideal
Egg Donor
should test 15-26 on Antral Follicle Count test!
The rest is pretty simple. You may even predict how many eggs
will be retrieved. More eggs ( that is translated into more
embryos) give you more chances to have a baby. If, for
example, your first embryo transfer attempt fails, you will have frozen
embryos to continue your treatment.
Use the following empirical formula to
predict
the number
of eggs that will be later retrieved:
EGGS=0.8*FA+2,
where FA- Antral Follicle Count.
EXAMPLE
I: If ultrasound test shows 18
follicles (FA=18), it is very
likely that you will get 0.8*18+2=16.4 eggs retrieved ( we can round it
to 16).
Normally,
not all eggs make embryos
because some of them are of poor quality. After
fertilization,
you may have 10-13 embryos of different quality at the day 3
of
development ( from 2 to 8 cells each ).
About
30% of embryos, or
3-6 embryos, may develop into day 5 blustocysts.
Blustocysts tend to score higher for implantation and birth rate,
currently over 50% per transfer.
YOU
CHANCES
FOR IVF SUCCESS ARE VERY HIGH!
HOW TO
SELECT EGG DONOR?
Surrogacy
Tips
