Donor eggs: the one place where your age stops mattering
Around 40% of donor egg transfers end in a live birth, at every recipient age.
This is the one claim in fertility marketing that the national data straightforwardly support.
| Patient age | Live birth per transfer, donor eggs | Live birth per transfer, own eggs |
|---|---|---|
| Under 30 | 43.5% | 42.5% |
| 35 | 42.3% | 40.5% |
| 38 | 43.3% | 36.6% |
| 40 | 43.2% | 31.0% |
| 42 | 40.1% | 24.0% |
| 44 | 39.9% | 16.1% |
| 45 and over | 37.4% | 12.3% |
The CDC's own footnote reads: Patients of all ages are combined because previous data show that a patient's age does not substantially affect success when using a donor's eggs or donated embryos.
Across all ages the figure is 40.6%, ranging from 37.4% to 50.0%.
And it is a national average. It says nothing about your clinic's own results, which you are entitled to ask for.
One useful negative finding: in 1,291 donor egg recipient cycles from 223 donors across 47 US centres, adding chromosome screening of the embryos made no difference to live birth, 53.8% with it against 55.8% without. If screening is proposed as part of a donor egg cycle, that is the number to put on the table.
is justified on ethical grounds and should acknowledge the time, inconvenience, and discomfort associated with screening, ovarian stimulation, oocyte retrieval, and postretrieval recovery and not vary according to the planned use of the oocytes or the number or quality of oocytes retrieved.
That last clause rules out two things deliberately. Payment should not depend on how many eggs are collected, which would turn a woman's response to stimulation drugs into a piece rate. And it should not depend on whether the eggs are used for treatment or for research.
If you are choosing between donor programmes, how the donor is compensated is a fair thing to ask about, and the answer tells you something about the programme.
What this topic does not cover is what donor conception means for a family, for the child, and for the donor. That is not a medical question and this guide will not pretend to answer it in a paragraph. It is the subject of counselling that the fertility societies say should be offered, and that is worth taking up rather than declining.