Εgg Donation

Egg donation in Greece is altruistic. So how is it possible to have so many donors available in Greece and no waiting lists? This is a question that we are often asked.

The fact that egg donation is fully anonymous in Greece plays its role. Women that decide to donate their eggs are aware that they will not have any sort of troubles in the future as their anonymity is protected by law.

For us, egg donors are very brave and generous women that offer incredible help.

But when we ask them what is the reason that they decide to go ahead with it, the answers we get vary.

Natural Donors

These are women that ‘giving’ and charity plays a very important role in their lives. These women who usually support charities, are also register to be organ donors, offer to give blood when needed or adapt babies from developing countries.

Having accepted help before

These are women that usually have accepted altruistic help before. Following that, they have decided to offer themselves help to people they do not know, in order to pay back.

Having close relatives with infertility problems.

These are women that had a close relative, usually a sister with a subfertility problem. So they have personal knowledge of all the psychological and financial distress that this can cause. They know, that the battle against subfertility can be life changing and destroy relationships. They also know that egg donation can sometimes be the only way a couple to have a family. So, knowing all that have decided to help.

Family value 

In Greece the value of family is on the top of the scale. Family for Greeks is a very important part of their culture and the bond between family members stays forever. Especially for a Greek woman who has completed her family dream, the fact that another woman will not be able to become a mother is really sad. Even the thought by some of them who have completed their family early, that “every single month an egg is lost for no reason” (donor’s words) is the triggering factor that makes them turn into egg donors.

Word of mouth

Most of our donors had a friend who had become a donor herself. She went through this, she realized from personal experience that in the end you get a sometimes life changing feeling of giving and offering help and that the whole procedure can be much easier than it sounds and have advised a friend of them to try it herself.

Women that face infertility problems themselves 

For example women that their only fertility problem is blocked tubes or severe male factor. These women have personal experience of what infertility means. These women, before they decide to go ahead and have a child themselves through IVF, they want to offer their help to women that face the same problem with them, cannot naturally have a family. For these women egg donation can sometimes be a good test of how their ovaries can be stimulated in an IVF cycle when the time comes.

Money

We believe that If you do not have the urge to help others, would be difficult to go through an IVF procedure no matter how much money would be offered to you. But it is true that the legal reward that donors can get for their expenses and / or time off work and ‘biological distress’ can be important for lots of them that think about it. Especially since the beginning of Greek financial crisis.

Through our awareness campaign regarding egg donation in Greece, the percentage of women that decide to donate their eggs not exclusively for financial reasons, is constantly increasing. There are donors who are well educated and financially stable. There are even donors who are celebrities. But all of them, regardless the reason that makes them become donors, are generous women.

There are lots of egg donors who want to go ahead with egg donation with us and there are lots of donors listed for egg donation at the cooperating IVF centers of Pelargos. In 95% of the cases we manage to find a donor that matches well with the recipient in 1-month max period of time. This means that by the time all the initial tests are performed to the recipient we usually have a suitable donor ready to be synchronized. Of course when we have to do with non-Caucasian egg donors this waiting time can become longer, especially for Asian ones.

According to law egg donors need to be younger than 35 years old in Greece, but Pelargos cooperates with IVF Centers that use donors younger than 30 years old. Egg donors are healthy, young women, with normal weight and with no family history of gene diseases and no history of psychiatric disease. If we know that a donor has twice in a row failed before, to achieve a recipient pregnancy, we at Pelargos do not use her for donation again.

All of the donors are checked for HIV 1-2, Hepatitis B and C, syphilis according to the HFEA protocols, as well as cystic fibrosis and a karyotype. The screening testing to the donors is much more thorough than the one performed in other countries. Also an ultrasound scan, an AMH and a hormonal check are performed on all of them. Finally If desired by the recipient we can check donors for more than 160 recessive diseases with a blood test or even perform PGS before the transfer.

In Greece egg donation is anonymous. This makes the significance of correct matching of donor to recipient really important. We ensure that cooperating IVF centers will have a photo of you, which of course is strictly confidential, as the rest of your personal information. Pelargos ensures that you will be matched to a suitable donor to a max possible degree.

Physical characteristics to be matched are skin colour, colour of hair, height, eye colour. We also pay much attention to match the donor to the recipient after taking into consideration the education level and profession. After having our initial consultation and If we decide to go ahead together, we ask If you want to write a few lines regarding to your character. This can be forwarded to the cooperating centers and also play its role as far as it regards correct matching. The constantly increasing number of women who decide to donate their eggs because of many different each time reasons, allows to have a big list of women who want to donate and a variety of choices to ensure a proper match.

The fact that donors who are referred to cooperating centers by Pelargos, through our awareness campaign regarding egg donation,are treated as important and generous women during their IVF cycles, as well as the fact that we co-operate with more than one IVF Centers with many registered donors each, further increase the availability of them.

There are women who find out that it would be extremely difficult or even impossible to get pregnant using their own eggs, either naturally or through IVF. There are many different reasons for that.

The most important ones are:

• Congenital absence of ovaries

• Surgically removed ovaries

• Women that needed to have radio or chemotherapy for cancers before

• Women with premature menopause because of immunological reasons

• Women on menopause

• Older women, usually over 40 years old that have poor amount of eggs or really bad quality, resulting to not respond well to stimulation or create very bad quality embryos. These are women usually called poor responders in IVF. These sorts of women for unknown reasons can sometimes be of younger age.

• Women with chromosome abnormalities like Turner syndrome

• Women with rare genetical diseases that do not want to pass the gene to their offspring

• Women over 44 years old irrespective of being well otherwise and have a normal cycle, can find it hard to get pregnant with their own eggs, because of poor egg quality.

• Initial 1 hour skype or face-to-face consultation. Assessment of the case, thorough analysis, explanation of legislation, medical tests needed arranged, offered psychological assistance if needed.

• Email of recent recipient’s photo, physical characteristics, profession, education. Few lines about the character.

• Above strictly Confidential information is Forwarded to coordinator of cooperating center.

• Matching of donor with recipient happens in max 1 month for Caucasian donors.

• Follow up Skype or face-to-face consultation. Non-identifying information about donor passed to recipient. Check that all needed tests have been performed. Arrange for relevant documents to be signed and notary appointment booked if couple is not married.

• Synchronizing donor to recipient with contraception pills.

• Start building up recipient’s endometrium with estrogen. Endometrium and ovaries checked by fellow gynecologists based abroad whilst donor’s ovaries are stimulated.

• Couple travels to Greece before egg collection. Semen given at the day of the egg collection.

• Next day following ICSI fertilization we see how many eggs have been fertilized.

• Transfer on Day 5. Up to 2 embryos.

• Rest of embryos cryopreserved.

• 12 Days later pregnancy test is done.

We have noticed that our fresh egg donation cycles have equal success rates with our frozen cycles due to vitrification technology. At the same time synchronization is much easier. Flights can be booked earlier and usually cost less. Egg donation can be done on one stop or 2 stops travels. (signing off documents and embryo transfer) Our concierge is a phone away to arrange everything for you. All-inclusive services. No hidden costs.

2 different Egg Donation Services are mainly offered.

Exclusive Donor /high end service – Minimum of 10 eggs guaranteed.

Minimum of 2 blastocysts transfer guaranteed

Guarantee of frozen embryos(depending on sperm)

Success rates of 85%

Increased cost

Normal Egg Donation Service – Minimum of 7 eggs guarantee

Minimum of 2 blastocysts transfer guarantee

Success rates of 75 % Reduced cost

If you want to know more about our egg donation services book an appointment with us.

First of all, it is important to understand the significance of the decision to go ahead with egg donation. At Pelargos we believe that every woman needs to rule out any chances of getting pregnant with her own eggs, before she decides to proceed with an egg donation cycle. For some women, like those without ovaries or premature menopause, egg donation is the only solution and this is crystal clear.

There are women though with a normal cycle, who are poor responders. This means that their ovaries do not stimulate well at all. Some of those women produce a minimum amount of eggs in IVF and in a worst-case scenario they create embryos of very poor quality. This happens quite often to women over 40 years old and becomes very common in ages of over 44 years old. Unfortunately, age is the only independent and significant factor that affects quality of eggs and the most difficult one to diverse. These women can sometimes carry on trying with IVFs with their own eggs, despite the very poor chances of success. This usually leads them to psychological and financial exhaustion. At Pelargos we believe that honesty and integrity is the most important factor when consulting a woman like this.

Let us take an example. Chances of having a positive pregnancy test, achieving a clinical pregnancy and giving birth to a healthy baby at the age of 45 for a woman who has IVF with her own eggs, are extremely poor. Maria, 45 years old, poor responder with 3 failed cycles before, booked a consultation with us.

If on the other hand they decide to go ahead with egg donation cycle that gives them chances of 80% this would also be a responsible decision, as long as they fully understand everything about egg donation. This is the role we serve. To honestly present the real chances and the real costs. To thoroughly analyze everything. To make sure there is full understanding. And then, to allow the couple to make a responsible decision.

Maria finally did not have IVF with us. Most women in the world would prefer to have a child with their own genetic material. After all they need to make their own decisions. But it would be dishonest to tell them they have more chances than the ones who actually have. If they finally balance everything and decide to go ahead with IVF with their own eggs despite the aforementioned chances then at least this would be a responsible decision coming from full understanding.

We were also honest when we proposed PGS to her in order to rule out chromosome abnormalities in embryos. But even if she was really lucky the chances of giving birth to a healthy baby would not get more than 20% following PGS and the cost of the IVF would increase a lot. We would still be honest if we had not mentioned few of these details. But we did.

This woman though needed to clearly understand that there is a long distance from a positive pregnancy test till giving birth to a healthy baby. Otherwise we would not be honest towards her. She needed to be aware that miscarriage rates and chromosome abnormalities detection rates at this age are extremely high. Rarely a woman with a positive pregnancy test finally manages to give birth at this age.

For us though, it was still very important that Maria understood that her chances of giving birth to a healthy baby through IVF with her own eggs were no more than 5%. Yes at an excellent laboratory like the ones we cooperate with and with the use of a tailor made protocol to her we were honest when we told her that chances of positive pregnancy test were about 15 %. After that statement, we could try and place her under the IVF procedure with us.

From the first consultation it was obvious that Maria was eager and keen on keep trying with her own eggs. It was easy to understand that she eagerly expected from us to give her hopes. It was easy to understand, that if we did not give her hopes she would perhaps go somewhere else and then somewhere else till someone would tell her that she has good chances with some sort of special and unique protocol.

Psychological support and consultation is always offered by our psychologist to all women who feel it might be necessary, before making the decision to go ahead with egg donation. Egg donation decision needs to be a fully responsible one. We, as Pelargos team might have lost an IVF cycle with Maria, but at least she had a personal and fully conscious decision, after an honest and thorough consultation and we are very proud for that. Even if she most probably had another failed IVF cycle somewhere else that was a personal decision.