Who Are Egg Donors?
For couples experiencing infertility, egg donors play a vital role in creating the family that these individuals desire. Egg donors come from all different backgrounds and are motivated to assist couples that are struggling to conceive a baby. We are committed to helping potential parents achieve a positive outcome, so our egg donors go through a vigorous screening process to make sure that they are the perfect fit for our program as well as for the recipient couples.
Because egg donation is not for everyone, potential candidates must meet certain criteria prior to being accepted into the program, including:
- Healthy females between the ages of 20-30
- No history of substance abuse
- Non-smokers
- Not taking mood stabilizers or antidepressants
- Within a healthy weight range and having a normal body mass index (BMI)
How Potential Egg Donors are Selected?
We want our patients to feel confident in their choice to use donor eggs, so we have an extensive process for selecting our candidates. Testing to become an egg donor includes various steps:
All of our potential donors will undergo a blood test to check ovarian reserve as well as a drug screening. Donors must demonstrate adequate ovarian reserve to be considered.
Our practitioners will complete a physical exam and perform a sonogram, which allows the doctor to review the candidate's health history and gather insight into the individual's reproductive health.
As part of the process, candidates have an infectious disease screening panel drawn at the laboratory. Required by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the series of tests in the Infectious Disease panel generally includes: Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Syphilis, and HIV. We will also test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea.
At CORM, egg donors must make an appointment for a psychological evaluation with one of our recommended providers. This meeting gives the donor candidate an opportunity to discuss being an egg donor with a mental health professional. As well, the evaluation helps ensure that that the individual is a good fit for the donor egg program by assessing credibility, stability, motivation and intentions of following through and completing the cycle.
Types of Donors: Dedicated and Shared Donors
CORM provides an extensive internal pool of anonymous egg donors that are pre-screened by the donor coordinators. Because of the expense, we rarely utilize outside agency donors. Our donor services team hand picks egg donors, creating a pool comprised of the best available candidates. Each potential candidate undergoes vigorous screening to become an egg donor.
Use of CORM anonymous donors has been proven to be both cost effective and successful for our recipient couples.
Dedicated anonymous donors are egg donors that are picked and used by one recipient couple. Once chosen, these donors are not available to other couples until the dedicated cycle is complete.
Shared anonymous donors have previously completed a cycle with CORM and have produced many eggs during their stimulation cycles as well as a positive result. Due to the history of a successful cycle, as well as the high quality and high quantity of eggs produced during the previous stimulation cycle, this donor's eggs can be shared between two anonymous recipient couples. This option provides an opportunity for a successful outcome for both recipient couples and it also allows for a shared financial responsibility. Using shared anonymous donors alleviates some of the costs involved with the donor egg process.
