Advanced Fertility Center of Chicago Blog

Egg donation has been utilized to help infertile couples since the early 1980s. Donor egg IVF utilization has continued increasing as more couples delay childbearing until their late 30s and 40s. In the United States in 2009 there were over 15,000 cycles using fresh donor eggs reported to SART (Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies) from their member clinics. Links to the SART and CDC IVF and donor egg success rate reports

Until the last few years all donor eggs cycles were done with fresh eggs retrieved and fertilized the same day with the male partner’s sperm. Over the years egg donation using fresh eggs has become highly successful at some fertility clinics in the US.

Live birth rates with fresh donor eggs are over 70% per fresh transfer procedure at the best egg donation clinics. Success rates at these same donor egg programs using fresh eggs are over 50% for live birth per transfer using a single embryo for transfer. This approach almost totally eliminates the risk for multiple pregnancy.

In recent years the techniques for freezing and thawing eggs have advanced significantly. As a result of these advances, success rates at some frozen donor egg banks has increased from about 10% success in the past to approximately 50% – at least this is what they claim.

Accordingly, business models have developed for frozen donor egg banks. Egg banks sell frozen donor eggs on a per batch or per egg basis. This can make the cost of using frozen eggs seem to be less than the cost of egg donation with fresh eggs. However, there are some significant problems with this approach.

1. Uncertain and relatively low success rates – with low success rates the cost per baby is actually higher
2. Uncertainty about long-term health issues for the children born from frozen eggs

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Richard Sherbahn, MD is a fertility doctor practicing in the Chicago, Illinois area. Connect with me on Google+

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a US government agency, has just released a preliminary version of its 2007 Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Report. It expects to release the final version in December.

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) released its version of the report on 2007 IVF cycles several months ago. However, clinics are not required by law to report to SART. They are required to report to the CDC. Therefore, the CDC report shows success rates for more clinics than the SART report does.

The CDC report covers data from 430 fertility clinics. Over 142,000 assisted reproductive technology (or IVF) cycles were done at these “reporting clinics”.

There were (as always) some fertility clinics that broke federal law and refused to report their data. These IVF clinics are referred to as “non-reporting clinics”. If fertility doctors will go so far as to break federal law to keep their IVF outcome statistics from the public – those “non-reporting clinics” most likely have very low success rates.

Before you choose a fertility clinic for IVF – check success rates.

Links to both the CDC and the SART IVF success rate reports

See our IVF success rates

Richard Sherbahn, MD is a fertility doctor practicing in the Chicago, Illinois area. Connect with me on Google+

Mail | Web | Google+ | More Posts