Egg Donation Process
New Life South Africa will have a thorough check of your medical history. Your candidacy will be rejected if you carry any genetic disorder, STDs or if you suffer from any menstrual irregularities. These should be notified clearly by the donor.
Egg donation involves four vital steps which are discussed elaborately below:
A) Screening:
Medical Screening:
After preliminary selection, your medical preparation follows for which you need to give 4 to 5 visits to our clinic. You are put through a series of screening tests to appraise how capable you would be as an egg donor. These are as following:
- Complete blood test
- Blood cells count and hemoglobin test
- Blood group test
- HIV(Human Immunodeficiency Virus) test
- HbsAg (Hepatitis B) test
- VDRL (Syphilis) test
- HCV (Hepatitis C) test
- FSH (CD2-4) Follicle stimulating hormone test
- Anti Mullerian hormone test
- LH(CD2-4) – Luteinizing hormone test.
- TSH/T3/T4- Thyroid stimulating hormone plus thyroid function test
- Prolactin test, which measures the level of hormone prolactin secreted by the Pituitary glands .
- Pelvic ultrasound test to measure Antral follicle count .
- Vaginal Swab test to reject any possibility of infection showing up during or post egg retrieval.
- Blood tests to be done to detect the presence of Chlamydia, Herpes and Citomegalo viruses.
Psychological Screening
This checks the following:
- Emotional aspect of the donor checking her willingness
- Donor’s motivation
- Her confidence level
- Her knowledge of the egg donation procedure including risks and rewards
- Her attitude
B) Synchronizing the menstrual cycles of the egg donor and recipient:
The egg donor is given birth control pills to regulate her menstrual cycle synchronizing it with that of the egg recipient. The recipient is also provided GnRH agonistic hormone to suppress her normal ovulation cycle. Therefore, when the donor’s eggs are ready for implantation post fertilization, the recipient’s uterine lining should be ready to receive the fertilized embryo.
C) Ovarian Hyper Stimulation:
The objective is to produce multiple mature eggs from the egg donor’s ovaries in one menstrual cycle. The treatment continues for about 10 to 14 days. Three classes of drugs are administered:
- Gonadotropin releasing hormones Agonist Analogues, which suppress the secretion of luteinizing hormone by the pituitary gland and stimulates eggs to mature within the body. The fertility drugs are pushed through daily injections.
- Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) or human menopausal gonadotropin, which stimulates the development of multiple egg follicles. During this medication, the physician will monitor periodically the maturity of eggs through pelvic ultrasound and blood tests. The donor should abstain from sexual intercourse during this period.
- Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is given by a single injection which stimulates the ovulation process. This drug is administered only when there is an indication that the eggs have matured.
D) Egg retrieval:
This step is started 34-36 hours after HCG injection. The eggs are removed from donor’s ovaries through Trans-vaginal ultrasound aspiration where the donor is kept under sedation. After this step, the egg donor rests for another two hours before she is released from the clinic.