Egg Donation in Cyprus:
Egg donation, or sometimes referred to as Donor Egg IVF treatment refers to receiving IVF treatment using donor eggs. This option is suited for women who are not able to get pregnant using their own eggs for a variety of reasons.
IVF with egg donation is a treatment option suited for patients with female factor infertility problem. If for any reason the female patient is unable to use her own eggs during treatment, use of an egg donor will be required in order to achieve pregnancy. Whether you need an egg donor or not can only be decided after an assessment has been made, or in some cases there are more evident indications such as entering menopause. There can be various reasons you may need egg donation as opposed to using your own eggs during IVF treatment.
Who Needs Egg Donation Treatment?
Patients with the following conditions often need the help of an egg donor for a successful pregnancy:
- Women with premature ovarian failure and/or premature menopause. Even though premature ovarian failure and premature menopause are sometimes used interchangeably, the two concepts are not exactly the same. Premature ovarian failure refers to ovaries losing their normal function before the age of 40. Women with premature ovarian failure may still have periods, even though they won’t be regular and can even get pregnant even though the chances of pregnancy will be very minimal. Premature menopause refers to entering menopause prematurely with no further menstrual periods.
A decrease in ovarian function due to increased age or premature ovarian failure is usually the number one reason why a couple might need to consider egg donation as an option. If a patient has premature ovarian failure, premature menopause or menopause due to increased age, her ovarian reserves have been greatly depleted and menstrual cycles have either begun to be very irregular or totally absent.
With highly diminished ovarian reserves, two big problems emerge. One is, the quality of the remaining eggs in the reserves tends to be very low and the genetic integrity of the eggs may have been compromised, suggesting that even if treatment is proceeded with own eggs, the likelihood of pregnancy will be minimal or even if pregnancy is achieved, incidence of a genetic disorder or a miscarriage will be much higher. The second problem is, when patients have highly depleted ovarian reserves, regardless of supplements used and regardless of the dose of stimulation medication to be administered, likelihood of successful ovarian stimulation will be low, and even after using all the medication, your ovaries may not respond at all, leaving you disappointed.
- Genetic conditions that may preclude a normal pregnancy. The female patient may have an abnormal karyotype, a single gene defect or another genetic condition she may pass down to her offspring, therefore, she might need to use an egg donor to avoid this problem.
- Repeated IVF failures can sometimes indicate that while the female patient’s eggs appear to be morphologically normal, they may not have fertilization potential, or they may be associated with genetic defects. In such cases, using donor eggs can be a solution.
- Ovaries may have been compromised or removed due to a medical condition, a surgery or cancer treatment. In that case, there is no further ovulation and pregnancy with own eggs is no longer possible.
Who are Egg Donors at Cyprus IVF Center?
Regardless of why you may need egg donation during your IVF treatment, it is important that you are well matched with a suitable egg donor. Before proceeding with treatment, we ask that you fill out our donor/recipient form so that our egg donor coordinator can narrow down your donor options and we can match you up with the most ideal egg donor.
Another important part of the egg donation program at North Cyprus IVF Centre is the choice of your egg donor. Even though North Cyprus laws require complete donor anonymity, we are still able to provide you with certain information regarding our donors. As a general rule, our donors should comply with the following standards:
- Must be aged between 19-29
- Must have her body mass index (BMI) in the normal range
- Must be mentally stable and must pass her psychological evaluation Must go through infectious disease screening
- Must go through hormone testing and fertility assessment
- If donor is from a certain geographic region with any genetic predispositions, she must go through additional testing.
- Is a non-smoker
- Only uses alcohol in moderation
Optionally, egg donors can undergo genetic karyotype analysis and additional screening per your request, but these will have associated additional costs.
Our donors are predominantly consisted of international university students studying at universities in North Cyprus. Most donors are aged between 19-25 and we prefer that donors we use in our egg donation program have a successful donation history. Each egg donor is allowed to donate up to 5 times in her lifetime and donors whose previous donations have created a positive outcome are called back in the upcoming months to donate again. That way, we can make sure that the eggs that we provide in your IVF program are pregnancy proven and that we can offer you a high chance of success with your treatment.
Due to egg donor anonymity in North Cyprus, we can only share certain information about our egg donors. These include age, height, weight, ethnic origin, skin color, hair color, eye color, educational and occupational status, blood type as well as previous donation history. Given that there are a large number of international students who are willing to donate eggs, most of our donors are younger than 25 years of age, which means healthy and fertile eggs.
This is one of the main reasons why our success rates with egg donor IVF treatment is very close to 80%, which is way above world averages. Another reason why our egg donation program is one of the most successful egg donation programs in the world is the fact that we call back donors who have contributed to a successful pregnancy to donate for other couples up to five times, meaning, majority of our donors are fertility proven who have contributed to a successful pregnancy via their donation previously.
How to prepare for IVF with egg donation?
If you are using an egg donor in your IVF treatment cycle, you will not be required to undergo an ovarian stimulation protocol, which means no injections and no expensive medication! Preparing for a donor egg cycle is rather simpler compared to standard IVF treatments. However, before proceeding with treatment, we will still need to make sure that you are fit for pregnancy and that egg donor IVF treatment is the right method of treatment.
The first step always involves gathering as much information about your history of infertility as possible. Depending on your testing and treatment background, further testing and screening may be necessary. The starting point of preparation will be having a pelvic sonogram (ultrasound scan) in order to screen the lining of the womb and to make sure that there are no fibroids/polyps in the uterus/cervix or anything in general that migjt interfere with a successful pregnancy. If you have experienced repeated IVF failures, then additional testing might be required to rule out any genetic conditions, infections or any other problems that might have contributed to your IVF failures before we can proceed with treatment.
Once we make sure that everything is in order and treatment can be initiated, we will need to match you up with an egg donor. For this, we will ask that you fill out our egg recipient application form and give us a clear explanation of what you are looking for in an egg donor so that we can match you up with a suitable candidate. If you would like to meet your egg donor or would like to see pictures, we can still help via the international egg donor agency that we work with. However, in this case, the cost of your treatment will be much higher compared to the standard cost of IVF with egg donation at North Cyprus IVF Center.
Steps of Egg Donation IVF Treatment at Cyprus IVF Center :
- Making the Initial Contact: At this point, we will make first contact and based on information provided by you, we will make an initial assessment. The first step is the period where we obtain as much information as possible regarding your history of infertility testing/assessment as well as previous treatments (if applicable).
This is one of the most important stages of your IVF treatment as we will need to know as much detail as possible regarding your history of infertility so that we can identify the right treatment protocol that is customized for you. Even though we will not be stimulating ovaries for oocyte production, we will still need to make sure that you are fit for pregnancy and that there are no other problems that might interfere with a successful pregnancy.
- Initial Assessment and Preliminary Testing: At this point, based on your history of infertility and previous testing and treatment history, we will make an assessment of your treatment needs and requirements. After a thorough investigation of your existing test results and documentation, we may ask for additional testing for a more effective assessment depending on your unique history. Generally speaking, we will first want to make sure that you are fit for pregnancy and that there are no problems thatc an interfere with a successful pregnancy. These will necessitate the following tests:
- If you have regular menstrual cycles, then we will need a base line ultrasound scan (sonogram) on day 2 or day 3 of your menstrual period. If you do not have regular menstrual cycles, the scan can be done at any time. The purpose of the scan is to observe the ovaries and the uterus and make sure everything looks normal and as expected.
- If you have a history of failed IVF cycles and a case of unexplained infertility, then we will also ask that both you and your husband have a genetic karyotype analysis done to rule out any chromosomal abnormalities. A karyotype analysis does not cost too much and it can provide us with very important insights when explaining unexplained infertility.
- If you have a history of recurrent miscarriages or repeated IVF failures, then we will need you to undergo thrombophilia testing to see of there are any thrombophilia (blood clotting problems).
- It’s not necessary but it’s a good idea to have a hysterosalpingography (HSG) filming done before an IVF treatment. If you have had at least one failed treatment before, then HSG is a must.
- We will need your partner to have his semen analysis done to measure parameters such as count, volume, motility, morphology, pH and round cell count. We will need to make sure that his semen sample is suitable for ICSI treatment.
- Both you and your partner will need to undergo infectious disease screening.
We collaborate with a number of IVF specialists and other medical professionals around the world, so depending on your location, we may be able to recommend a doctor or a testing center for your preliminary work. Once we have all the necessary information, we will be able to make an assessment and will produce your treatment calendar accordingly. Based on your treatment calendar, we will be able to provide you with a prescription so that you can purchase your medication locally.
- Choosing an Egg Donor: The next step is to let us know about your donor preferences. Once you fill out our donor/recipient form, we will be able to match you up with a suitable donor and depending on when you are planning your cycle, we will either select donors who are already in sync with your menstrual period dates, or who can be synchronized so that we can have a fresh cycle.
Based on most suitable matches, you will be given a few options to choose from. Our donor coordinator works very carefully to match you up with the closest matches unless you have a different preference. Once you have selected your egg donor, the next step will be to prepare you both for the IVF treatment.
- Treatment Planning: During the initial preparation phase, you will start using your medication to prepare your uterus for a successful embryo transfer. This is much lighter than the medication protocols compared to standard IVF/ICSI treatments that stimulate your ovaries for egg retrieval. While using medication, we will ask that you see your local doctor (or a doctor / scan place we recommend) so that we can see how you are responding to medication and make sure everything is in order.
Given that you are provided with a comprehensive treatment calendar for this preliminary treatment, it is very easy and convenient to follow your program. Based on your treatment calendar, we will also be able to provide you with a prescription so that you can obtain your medication locally.
- Actual Treatment: Once this period is over, you will be expected to arrive in Cyprus to finalize your treatment. Our patient coordinators will organize your airport transfers as well as your accommodation arrangements.
Usually, if you are able to have your scans done locally, the length of stay in North Cyprus will be around 6 days. You will need to arrive here in time for your egg donor’s oocyte pick-up (OPU) procedure so that your partner can provide his fresh sample for a fresh round of ICSI with fresh eggs in order to give you the highest chance of success possible. Ideally, embryos are cultivated in an incubator for 3 to 5 days until they reach a suitable level of growth so that they can be transferred into the uterus. Depending on the number and quality of your embryos on day 1 check, you will have a chance to choose the stage at which the embryos are transferred.
We are happy to offer day 5 blastocyst transfer to all our patients free of charge, however, it should be known that even though blastocyst embryos have higher quality grading and have better pregnancy rates, some of the embryos will not make it into day 5 blastocyst stage although they would have generated pregnancy should they have been transferred on day 3. So, there is a trade-off between the number of your embryos and the quality grading when it comes to deciding when to have the embryo transfer done.
Our recommendation usually is to proceed with day 3 transfer unless there is a specific reason why your doctor might think day 5 embryo transfer will be a better option. Also, if you are having PGD screening done on your embryos, that will also necessitate a day 5 blastocyst transfer as testing and screening will take time.
Please contact us for more detail on Egg Donation in Cyprus.