Overview
Embryo donation is a blessing for couples with difficulties in building families. Numerous individuals around the globe are embracing the idea of embryo donation and starting to understand the advantages it provides to prospective couples.
About the Embryo Donation
Embryo donation is a new-age technique for helping patients who are not able to conceive with their own eggs. Here, embryos are created artificially by clinics and hospitals using donated sperm and eggs to cure infertile patients and get them pregnant by couples seeking in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment to conceive. During IVF some patients create extra eggs, which are frozen to be donated to the needy.
Patients have full control over whether they want to donate or discard it.
Who qualifies for Embryo Donation?
Embryo donors must fulfil the following criteria to become embryo donors,
- Donors must be between 21-35 years old
- Donors are given medication to resume their menstrual cycle before the procedure is started
- Several fertility drugs are given to the donor to induce her ovary to release a number of eggs
- Frequent blood tests and ultrasounds are conducted to see the progress and effects of medicines
- Donors with no genetic or sexually transmitted diseases
Once the donor is able to sustain and clear all of the above, she can donate the embryos.
Why is embryo donation important?
Embryo donation is an act of gratitude. There are many couples who are dying to get pregnant and have babies,
- Embryo donations help them get pregnant
- The embryos are saved from being discarded
- Donated embryos are also used by researchers for projects and experiments
The process of embryo donation
Below are the steps, excluding blood tests, diagnostics, and other tests,
- You need to choose a donor for the embryo, you can either choose someone you know or someone who is anonymous based on family history, genetic diseases, age, appearance, etc
- Before proceeding with the procedure, the recipient's mother’s health is examined, and it is also checked if her uterus is healthy to carry out the pregnancy
- The donor and the recipient are brought together to sign an agreement mentioning that the recipient couple will be the legal guardians of the potential child
- Once the agreement is finalized, the recipient's mother is taken through the frozen embryo transfer procedure, during which she is given medications to prepare her uterus for pregnancy.
Benefits
- There are many couples who wish to experience pregnancy and become parents; however, not everyone gets that chance. Some couples adopt children and some stay alone. However, through embryo donation, women can get pregnant, experience pregnancy, and give birth to a child.
- Embryos created through IVF get a better way to utilise without getting wasted
- Embryo donation is a little more reasonable to afford compared to other third-party reproduction techniques
Risks and complications
Egg or embryo donation has very minimal risk and very rare serious issues. However, below are a few complications,
- The insertion of the needle into the ovary caused bleeding.
- A few people experience bowel and bladder
- Sometimes people suffer from damaged blood vessels
- After the eggs are removed, a few women get an infection, which is cured with antibiotics as prescribed by the doctor
- A few patients suffer from ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome because of the medications,
In any case, always contact your doctor and explain the situation.
What is the possibility of donated embryos converting into children?
Embryo donation has 50-50 chances, and whether the donated embryos will help the women get pregnant and make babies is not easy to say as it depends on various components, such as
- Women’s age at the time when the embryo was created
- Genetic conditions of the donor couple
- The ability of the recipient women's uterus
Conclusion
Embryo donation is an efficient technique and provides a higher rate of success. In this process, a specialist extracts the egg from a qualified donor whose complete body screening is successful. If you are suffering from infertility or are not able to conceive, you must give this procedure a try.
Couples who are unable to conceive using their own eggs and sperm may opt for embryo donation. Single women or people suffering from genetic conditions also choose this procedure.
There is no restriction on the number of embryos that you can donate, provided you meet the eligibility requirements.
Embryo donation is available in three categories: • Anonymous donor • Approved donor • Open donor
Well, there is not much information to prove the validity; some experts say, a decade, or even more.
Treatments
