Hi, everybody and
welcome to FertilitySpace.
Today we're going to be talking
about donor egg IVF success rates.
There are many different reasons
why someone would use donor egg
during IVF
but some of the more common ones are
if someone has poor egg quality.
Usually they know
that they have poor egg quality
because they've had previous
failed IVF cycles.
Women with diminished
ovarian reserve or a male patient
who may be part
of a same sex relationship
or maybe is a single parent by choice.
So he has sperm available
to create an embryo
but he actually doesn't have an egg.
So he would need to use a donor
for that.
One of the common reasons
people use
donor egg is due to poor egg quality.
So as women age, egg quality decreases,
so essentially
it becomes more difficult for women
when they're older for their eggs
to lead to an embryo
that is chromosomally normal
and can lead to a live birth.
For example,
if we look at the CDC success rates
from the same year
for women using their own
eggs, women that were 40 years of age
or older using their own eggs
had about a 7.2% success rate per
IVF cycle.
Their success rate
as far as per embryo transfer,
if they got to the point
where they had an embryo to transfer,
the success rate was 22.6%.
Using donor eggs from a younger
woman is a way to improve the chance
that you will
have euploid embryos or embryos
with the correct number of chromosomes.
Even though women that are of advanced
maternal age
use their own eggs
for IVF all the time and have success,
some people do end up
needing to use donor egg.
Keep in mind that egg quality itself
can't really be tested.
It can be sort of inferred
by testing embryos by PGT-A
to see if the embryos have
the correct number of chromosomes.
But age
is often
used as an indicator of egg quality
because we do know that as women age
fertility declines
and the ability
to have embryos
that are chromosomally normal declines.
So essentially
that's an indication
that the egg quality becomes poorer
as as women age.
And then independent of older age,
a recent study
actually found that women
that are diagnosed
with diminished ovarian reserve
actually have poorer egg quality.
The study found that for women
with diminished
ovarian reserve,
their chance
of having a chromosomally normal embryo
was 24% lower than women in the cohort
that did not have diminished
ovarian reserve
and that were the same age as them.
So it was independent of age
that women with diminished
ovarian reserve
tended to have poorer egg quality.
Something to know about donor eggs
is that there are two types of donor
egg sources, essentially.
So you could work with a live donor
that would undergo
an egg retrieval on your behalf
so that you would have
fresh eggs available
for your IVF cycle
or you could purchase
a frozen cohort of donor eggs
from an egg bank.
So essentially
that would mean
that a donor has worked
with the egg bank
to donate eggs,
and you would just be purchasing
a cohort of those frozen eggs,
have them shipped to your clinic,
and then the eggs could be thawed
and used for your IVF cycle.
I mention this
because when we're going to
look at the IVF success rates
they do stratify the outcomes by using
fresh eggs
versus using frozen donor eggs.
One more thing to note
is that
the time at which
the embryo is transferred
is also notated in the success rates.
So some people would do a fresh
embryo transfer
where the embryo is transferred usually
5 or 6 days
after being fertilized in the lab.
But then some people did a frozen
embryo transfer.
So they would freeze their embryo first
and then thaw it at a later date
to transfer it to attempt a pregnancy.
OK, so now that we understand
the difference between
fresh donor eggs and frozen donor eggs,
let's have a look at the success rates.
So looking at the national
IVF success rates
for egg
donor IVF cycles,
we can see here
that for people
that had fresh donor eggs
and did a fresh embryo transfer,
the singleton live birth rate
was 49.5%.
For people that used frozen donor eggs
and did a fresh transfer,
their success rate was 44.1%.
And then for
people that did a frozen
embryo transfer from donor eggs,
their success rate was 44.5%.
And this is the singleton
live birth rate.
So this is the percent of donor egg
IVF cycles
that resulted in the birth
of a single baby.
So I think that's something
good to know, just so that you can have
all of the information.
You can also head to the FertilitySpace
website
and check success rates
for all the different clinics
across the United States.
So you can search clinics in your area
and check to see
what their IVF success rates are
for your age.
Let us know if you have any questions,
and I hope you all
have a really good day.