Egg donation is the process by which a woman, usually younger than 30 years, donates eggs to another woman who does not have eggs, or whose eggs carry abnormalities which make them incompatible with reproduction. In this way, the egg recipient can start a pregnancy and give birth to a baby, with whom no genes are shared.
In cases of egg donation, donors are medically evaluated, to ensure they are healthy and do not have risk factors that can affect themselves or the recipient. The criteria for genetic assessment of donors, vary according to the institution, ranging from family and personal medical and psychological history, to chromosome and genetic studies. Donors are also psychologically evaluated by specialized professionals. On the other hand, the donor’s identity may or may not be shared with the person who is born from her eggs. The decision to disclose the identity of the donor to the person born, must be contained in the consent forms signed prior to these procedures.
The donor’s hormonal stimulation and follicular aspiration is exactly the same as that described for the persons who will undergo IVF.
On the other hand, the recipient is the person willing to become pregnant with embryos produced from a donor’s eggs and sperm from her partner or a donor. The recipient must prepare her uterus in order to make it receptive and facilitate embryo implantation. For this purpose, she receives hormones (estrogen and progesterone) resembling the hormones present in a normal cycle, and embryos are transferred on a specific day of the cycle.
It is possible to synchronize the donor’s hormone stimulation with the recipient’s endometrial preparation, so that a fresh embryo can be transferred. It is also possible to freeze/vitrify the donated egg/s or produced embryos and transfer them one by one, in a deferred manner, preparing the recipient’s endometrium. Embryo transfer can also be performed in a natural non stimulated cycle.
If a woman runs out of eggs (menopause), or if her eggs are not capable of achieving a pregnancy, she will not be able to be a progenitor, that is, she cannot transfer her genes to her descendants. This does not mean that she cannot be a mother. Motherhood is not established by gene transfer. A woman is capable of hosting an embryo, and carry on a pregnancy in a completely normal way, give birth and breastfeed a baby, irrespective of whether the embryo derived from her eggs or from a donor. As seen in Figure 19, delivery rate practically does not change in women over 40 years, if her embryo has been generated from a very young egg donor. This means that the uterus and the whole body of the woman, is capable of achieving a pregnancy, give birth, breastfeed and establish maternal relationships with a child who does not share her genes and, indeed, after her menopause.
Figure 19. Autologous delivery rate by Fresh transfer and after Fresh OD according to woman’s age. RLA, 2017-2020.
The progressive rise in the age of a woman desiring to be a mother (Figure 20) determines a rise in the proportion of women requiring egg donation.
Figure 20. Age of a woman with autologous reproduction. Latin America, 1990-2021.
Nowadays, 19% of the assisted reproduction procedures in Latin America are performed with donated eggs. This means that, annually, more than 20,000 OD cycles are performed, and more than 6,000 babies are born every year. Figure 21 shows trends in the number of OD cycles and proportion of OD with respect to all ART cycles
Figure 21. Proportion of fresh and frozen ovodonation (OD) cycles compared to the total number of initiated cycles. RLA 1990-2020. Bars correspond to percentages, and dots, to the total number of cycles performed.
The Latin American Registry of Assisted Reproduction (RLA) thanks the 204 institutions accredited by REDLARA which, every year, report their data to RLA.
This voluntary and rigorous contribution makes it possible to generate a powerful database, which helps doctors and patients take decisions based on the best existing regional evidence.
This educational portal is the result of a collaborative activity between the Latin American Network of Assisted Reproduction (REDLARA), and University Diego Portales from Chile, which allow the link between the reproductive science and technology advances with the needs of people suffering from infertility and other forms of reproductive impairments.
We thank Dr. Ariel Ahumanda and Dr. Gustavo Martínez from Argentina for: images and videos of spontaneous in vitro fertilization, ICSI and PGT,
Dr. Roger Molinas from Paraguay for: videos of follicular aspiration and embryo transfer,
Dr. Javier Crosby from Chile for: images of different stages of in vitro embryo development,
Dr. Yasuyuki Mio from Japan for his video of in vitro embryo development.
We especially thank the industry for providing the financial support, which is so necessary to keep the Latin American registry as a pillar of this international cooperation, which today includes 16 countries and more than 200 collaborative institutions, from Mexico in the north to Chile in the far south.
