What to ASK when looking for Donated Embryos

 

So, you have decided to build your family using donated embryos, you have joined social media groups and have found a potential embryo donor... but NOW WHAT? There are many steps in the process that need to happen before the embryo(s) are transferred to your name, which I will discuss in another post.

 The first and most important thing to do is to learn about the embryo(s) that are available to you. All donated embryos are not created equally, and it's important to understand what your estimated chances of success will be. If you had a 4% chance of success, would you still want those embryos? What about 20%? 80%? If you answered yes to all of these, it is still important to understand the potential success rate so you can manage your expectations. Failed attempts are not easy to experience emotionally, physically, or financially so a healthy expectation of your outcome is definitely recommended.

Important questions to ask your potential embryo donor:

1. Why did you need IVF to build your family? What was your fertility diagnosis? 

2. How old was the patient providing the eggs? (Patient or egg donor?)

3. How old was the patient providing the sperm cells? (Patient or sperm donor?)

4. How many eggs were retrieved and what was the fertilization rate? 

5. How many embryos were produced with this cycle? 

6. What year were they cryopreserved (frozen)? With what method were they frozen?

7. What day of culture were they cryopreserved (frozen)?

8. What are the grades? What is the grading scale used? 

9. Were the embryos biopsied? How many were chromosomally normal? 

10. How many embryos did you transfer at a time? How many transfers did you complete before you were successful? What were those grades? 

These questions you can answer yourself with some research of the clinic that created and cryopreserved the embryo(s):

11. What are the published success rates of the clinic for patients in this age range? 

12. What are the published FET success rates for patients in this age range?

13. What are the reviews from patients at the clinic? 

14. How many cycles per year does the clinic complete?

These questions will not change success rates, but also important for you to know in advance:

15. Does your clinic know (and approve) of your donation plans? 

16. Does your clinic charge a fee for transferring embryos to another patient? 

17. Is there a ship-out fee? 

18. Are you open to future contact from the resulting donor conceived child(ren) or do you prefer this embryo donation to remain anonymous? 

19. Are you open to completing a health history for both the egg and sperm cell source? 

20. Are both parties willing to complete a phycological appointment with a reproductive mental health provider as well as complete a physical including infectious disease testing per FDA guidelines? (If egg donor or sperm donor was used, they should be able to confirm this was completed at the time of donation).

So now you have the list of important questions, I will be posting an explanation to each of these as well as how to translate this into a potential success rate. Watch out for those!