On the face of it, guarantees for donor eggs from egg banks provide greater support to intended parents than no guarantees with fresh donor egg cycles. However, this should not engage the parents into a false sense of security; you need to look a little past the guarantee of a blastocyst or three day embryo or more. The key question is, how often does an egg bank need to use their guarantee?
Why is the frequency of use of an egg banks guarantees important? From the intended parent’s perspective, when they select donor eggs and undergo a cycle of sperm prep, egg warming, ICSI, culture of embryo, and the uterine prep for the intended parent, one would expect that they aren’t anticipating a poor outcome and the need to utilize a guarantee. That means selecting another donor, waiting for months to prepare and schedule another transfer, and the costs of doing these things all over again. When an egg bank is utilizing their guarantees up to 30% of the time, then you have a pretty high chance that your cycle will halt at some point prior to transfer while you access the guarantee. The ideal guarantee is one that isn’t needed to replace the first cohort you work with.
The World Egg Bank is the only egg bank that can manage quality controls and hence, the use of our guarantees is very low, about 5%. The quality of donor eggs matters. Quality is created through consistent and focused protocols that are managed, tested and strictly maintained. How many people at dozens, or hundreds of networked, outsourced clinics are freezing your donor eggs for other egg banks? How can that system be managed?
At The World Egg Bank, we conduct all donor screening, stimulation, retrievals and egg vitrification, storage and shipping with standardized protocols and the same, experienced laboratory systems and staff. We manage all donor processes at our one, state of the art clinic, built and operated just for egg donors. We are not a ‘virtual egg bank’ with a collection of donor eggs vitrified from many places; We are a real facility that manages every egg donor that appears on our website.
Diana Thomas
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