Inside Egg Donation and Our Donor Selection Process
7th March 2016
Young women from all over the region make parenthood possible by donating their eggs to individuals struggling with infertility. Anonymous egg donors have helped more than 5,000 Shady Grove Fertility patients realize their dream of parenthood. But what are the egg donor requirements? While each donor is reimbursed for her time and effort, most women decide to donate because of the opportunity to help a family in need. Each donor cycle is anonymous and every potential donor undergoes an intensive medical and psychological screening before being accepted into our egg donation programme.
What is Egg Donation Treatment?
Egg donation treatment is an in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle in which a woman use another woman’s eggs (donor) rather than her own. This treatment is commonly used for women who are unable to use their own eggs or have decreased ovarian function or failure, and for same sex couples.
Can Anyone Donate, or are There Certain Egg Donor Requirements?
Initially, interested women will be asked to submit a short online application that asks about basic qualifications. Our donors are usually between the ages of 21 to 32, in good overall health, with a body mass index (BMI) between 16 to 28 (calculate your BMI). They are also non-smokers, college educated, and live and 1 hour of our full service locations.
What is the Donor Process?
After a potential donor has submitted her initial application, she will be notified if she can proceed with creating an egg donor profile, attend Donor Day, and complete her psychological evaluation. If a potential donor’s information meets Shady Grove Fertility’s standards, her profile will be uploaded to our donor database where she will wait to be selected by a recipient or recipients. Once matched with a recipient, a donor nurse will contact her to schedule her stimulation cycle in order to synchronize her cycle with the recipient’s. The injections, which stimulate her ovaries to produce and grow larger quantities of eggs than the body naturally produces, are easy to administer with side effects similar to what she experiences during her period. A physician will perform her egg retrieval procedure at one of Shady Grove Fertility’s ambulatory surgery centers (ASC) in Rockville, MD. The egg retrieval, which takes about 20 to 30 minutes, involves a physician usinga transvaginal ultrasound probe to guide a needle into each ovary to remove the eggs in each follicle. Donors will be able to recover from the 3 hour retrieval visit within a day or so.
If you have any questions about our Donor Database or the Donor Egg Treatment Programme in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team by calling 0208 003 0827, or email Amanda Segal our International Patient Liaison at [email protected].