Fresh vs frozen donor eggs
Fertility treatment with donor eggs can be done with either fresh or frozen eggs. At Cryos, you can purchase frozen donor eggs, which means they are already retrieved and available for use. By already having the donor eggs retrieved, the donation process becomes easier and more efficient. Read more about fresh and frozen donor eggs in this blog post, the difference between them, and why you should choose frozen donor eggs.
What are frozen donor eggs?
Frozen donor eggs are eggs that have been retrieved from egg donors and placed in a cryotank for later use. By using frozen donor eggs, the donation process becomes easier and more efficient, since you do not have to fertilize the eggs immediately after they are retrieved. Therefore, you do not have to synchronize your menstrual cycle to the egg donors.
Once you need the frozen donor eggs for fertility treatment, they are thawed and fertilized with your partner’s or a donor’s sperm. From there, it hopefully develops into an embryo which can be transferred to the recipient.
How are the donor eggs frozen?
Cryopreservation is an important part of fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs. Once the eggs have been retrieved, they are evaluated by an embryologist who selects the eggs that are mature and top quality for further preservation.
The donor eggs at Cryos are cryopreserved through vitrification, which prevents ice crystal formation, that potentially could damage the eggs. By preserving the eggs through vitrification, a higher survival numbers and overall success rates will be achieved.
What are fresh donor eggs?
Fresh donor eggs are retrieved from the donor and immediately fertilized with sperm. The fertilized eggs are kept in a laboratory for five days, where they hopefully develop into embryos. The resulting embryos will then be transferred to the recipient or frozen for further use.
During the menstrual cycle, different hormones are released that helps the embryo grow into a baby. Because these hormones have to be released at the right time, the woman receiving the embryo and the donor must synchronize their cycles.
If you want to learn more about embryos and what it is, then follow the link to our blog post.
What is the difference between frozen and fresh donor eggs?
The main difference between frozen and fresh donor eggs is whether they are stored in a cryotank or needs to be fertilized almost immediately after retrieval. By having fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs, the recipient does not have to synchronize their menstrual cycle with the egg donor, which makes the donation process easier and more efficient. The egg donor can donate whenever they think the time is right and the recipient does not have to time the transfer of embryos to a certain period.
The availability and flexibility of frozen donor eggs have a positive impact on both the timeframe and cost of fertility treatment. In most cases it is possible to start fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs sooner than treatment with fresh donor eggs, at a lower cost.
Donor eggs under a microscope
Why should you choose frozen donor eggs?
The main reason for you to choose fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs over treatment with fresh donor eggs is the availability of eggs for immediate use and variety in donors available. As mentioned before, when choosing fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs, you do not have to synchronize your menstrual cycle with the donor, which means that there are a lot more egg donors available for you to choose between.
Time is of essence in fertility treatments. When using frozen eggs from Cryos the donors have already been through an extensive screening, while in fertility treatment with fresh donor eggs, you need to wait for months before the donor has been screened properly. If the screening is not favourable then the egg donor will be unsuitable to donate, which means the whole process must be repeated with a new egg donor. Nowadays the success rates of treatments with fresh and frozen donor eggs are similar. If you are interested in reading more about the success rates, then follow the link to view Cryos’ exceptionally high success rates when using donor eggs.
At Cryos, it is only possible for you to purchase frozen donor eggs. If you are interested in learning more about the process of fertility treatment with frozen donor eggs, then follow the link to our page on the subject.
If you liked this blog post and are interested in more blog posts about egg quality, we can recommend you to read the blogs Egg quality and fertility - all you need to know or 5 facts about women's egg and fertility.