How does oocyte donation work?

Treatment and Monitoring

Is there an age limit for the donation of oocytes?

Yes, although age is not a problem for oocyte donation, Clinica Eugin carries out embryo transfers for women of up to 50 years of age (inclusive). Spanish legislation does not set a limit for the age of the recipient, but the clinic establishes this limit for ethical reasons.

The only thing we need for oocyte donation is a healthy uterus that can receive the embryos and allow them to develop correctly. Whether you have ovarian function or not (menopause) is not a problem for becoming pregnant using this technique: we will adapt the treatment according to your case.

The success rate of any attempt (1st, 2nd,…) is 61% regardless of your age, the reason why you are following this treatment, the age of the donors or the number of previous attempts.

 

How do we select the oocyte donors?

We work with a group of healthy donors of between 18 and 35 years of age and we select the donors according to their physical resemblance to the oocyte recipients. We check the phenotype and physical characteristics of both with the colour photos that we ask you for or take when you attend the clinic and with the phenotype sheet filled in on the day of the first visit.

We match you with a donor manually and in accordance with the law: we respect your phenotype very carefully as Spanish legislation obliges us to respect the physical characteristics of the recipient. The donation is anonymous and altruistic. Therefore we can never find out anything else about the donor apart from her blood group/Rhesus and age.

Education, intellectual level, religion, beliefs or physical or psychological abilities are not determining factors; this is all a question of the personal education of the parents and the social environment, so we do not take them into account when we choose the donors.

 

How do we synchronize the hormone cycles?

Once you have started your hormonal treatment, several donors will start the stimulation and once we consider your endometrium to be ready, we will assign you one of the donors, who coincides with your physical characteristics and we will tell you the day she will be ready to carry out the punction. This waiting period until we consider your endometrium to be ready is variable and often depends on the length time of the stimulation of the donors.

This method allows the treatment to be carried out calmly and not to depend on just one donor who may be cancelled during the cycle if she does not respond correctly to the ovarian stimulation. This would be a problem for you as your hormone treatment would also have to be suspended. This system means the possible cancellation of your treatment and any unnecessary stress are avoided.

The donors follow a shorter treatment than you and start when your treatment is already underway. As you will understand, we do not tell you the dates of the follicular controls of the donors, but only the day of their follicular punction.

 

How many embryos do we transfer?

Generally, we transfer two apt embryos when there is no health risk for the patient and we accept the possibility of twins.

As far as the evaluation of the embryos to be transferred is concerned, this is done in a laboratory and consists of a morphological evaluation of the different stages of the development and in which various parameters are taken into consideration. These parameters are: the number of cells, the size and symmetry of the cells, fragmentation… The biologists classify the embryos according to these criteria and deem them to be apt or not apt to be transferred and only apt embryos are transferred.

Spanish legislation permits the transfer of up to three embryos. However, at Clinica Eugin, we do not recommend that three embryos be transferred. In fact, the success rate observed is almost identical to when only two embryos are transferred, but there is a much higher risk of a multiple pregnancy (twins or triplets) which implies problems during the pregnancy and the birth:

For the babies, there is a higher risk of premature birth and its associated consequences.

For the mothers, there is a higher risk of premature birth, pregnancy hypertension, gestational diabetes,…

We do not want to put your life, or that of your child, in danger and we want to avoid the need to carry out an embryo reduction which can be the cause of many psychological problems or miscarriages.

 

When will my embryo transfer take place?

The clinic suggests the transfers take place between days 12 and 60 of the oestrogen treatment, when the donor selected for her phenotype profile is ready for the oocyte punction. We will be able to inform you of this with 2 days notice.

The majority of transfers take place between days 12 and 45 of the treatment.

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