Egg donation on the increase

According to an article in USA Today, more U.S. women are attempting to have children using eggs donated by other women and taking home healthy babies as a result.

Fertility clinics reported 18,306 procedures using fresh or frozen donated eggs in 2010, up from 10,801 in 2000, according to the study published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, and presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the International Federation of Fertility Societies.

Donor eggs often are used by women who are older than 35 and having trouble becoming pregnant because their own viable eggs are in short supply. However, the study shows that traditional in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures – in which women use their own eggs, with sperm from their partner or a donor – remain much more common, comprising 89% of procedures in 2010.

Egg donation will become even more popular and the new freezing technique, vitrification, makes the use of frozen embryo egg banks a viable option. Using frozen eggs from a bank like Donor Egg Bank USA makes the process quicker, more efficient and less expensive than the traditional approach of matching a recipient to a specific donor in a fresh cycle.

For more information please see our page on egg donation or Donor Egg Bank USA which you can link to from our page.