Becoming an Egg Donor

Thank you for considering becoming an egg donor.

The process of having children is seen as being natural and simple.  Most people take it for granted, at least until they discover that they may not after all be able to conceive children.  This realisation can have far reaching implications for many people.

Most of us do not realise that even for those who "do not have any difficulty in conceiving" the average chance of conceiving is only about 20-25% per cycle.  Indeed, one in seven couples seek medical advice at some stage in their lives in order to achieve a pregnancy.

Some couples fail to achieve a pregnancy because the female partner may have suffered a premature menopause - at as young as 20 years of age, never able to produce eggs.  Other women may have lost the use of their ovaries due to disease, surgery or the treatment of cancer.  Some women carry inherited genetic diseases and are thus seeking donated eggs so as not to transmit the disease to their children.

There is an acute shortage of egg donors and many couples wait for several years to benefit from donated eggs.  Some couples are fortunate enough to have friends and family willing to donate eggs as a "known donor".  However most are not so fortunate and thus they are likely to be 'in the queue' waiting for sufficient anonymous donors to volunteer their eggs.

Who might benefit from egg donation?

There are selected groups of patients to whom egg donation is recommended.

• Women who have a uterus but whose ovaries do not produce eggs due to premature menopause (affect 1-2% of women under the age of 40). Women who have had their ovaries removed as a treatment for cancer, pelvic infection or endometriosis. Women whose ovaries were damaged by chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. Women who were born without functioning ovaries (Turner's Syndrome). Women whose ovaries are resistant to stimulation by the pituitary hormones, so-called 'resistant ovarian syndrome' and women who have had poor ovarian response to hormonal stimulation in the past.
• Women who have a high risk of passing on genetic disorders to their offspring. e.g. women who are carriers of sex linked diseases such as haemophilia, Duchenne's muscular dystrophy and Huntington's chorea. Couples with recurrent pregnancy loss due to chromosome abnormalities. Although antenatal foetal diagnosis is available for an increasing number of these conditions, termination of pregnancy remains unacceptable to many couples. Recent advanced in preimplantation genetic diagnosis has enabled couples to undergo IVF, preimplantation embryo biopsy and the transfer of normal embryos. However the high cost and complexity of this procedure put these techniques beyond the means of many couples.
• Women with recurrent IVF failures due to poor response to stimulation by fertility drugs, or poor egg quality.
• Older women who have poorly functioning ovaries or who have delayed starting a family.

How successful is it?

The HFEA keeps statistics on the success rates for various kinds of fertility treatment including success rates for egg donation.