The World Egg Bank is proud to offer your patients convenient, successful, and affordable options for oocyte donation. We offer fresh oocyte donation, however, most patients prefer the convenience, affordability, and choice of frozen oocyte donation. Your patients may choose banked oocytes or they may prefer a Custom Choice stimulation cycle. We have more than 400 donors available. Another option is to have their partner’s semen shipped to TWEB for creation of embryos (Custom Choice Embryo).

The Process

Your patients may begin the process with The World Egg Bank on our web site. Recipients can register and view donor profiles and adult donor photos without any cost. Most recipients choose to purchase six or seven oocytes.

When your patient has chosen the donor and the option, The World Egg Bank will coordinate the shipping of the oocytes and the embryologist’s warming training based on the date of expected warming.

Recipient Screening and Endometrial Preparation

Screening is performed according to your usual practice for oocyte donation recipients, which typically includes hormonal testing, uterine cavity assessment, and semen analysis. Similarly, endometrial preparation may proceed according to your usual protocols. In order to facilitate training/verification for the initial warming, a programmed cycle is recommended.

Training, Warming and Insemination

The World Egg Bank provides a verification/training program and an ongoing training program. Although many clinics have extensive experience with thaws of vitrified blastocysts, the transition to thawing vitrified ova is a significant one. Our experience over the past 10 years has shown that even those highly skilled embryologists with prior vitrification experience still have difficulty when transitioning to warming ova. There is a learning curve, as is the case with any new technology. Our goal is to seek the best outcomes for your patients.

Recipient practices with varying skill levels report more than 85% survival of our oocytes by morphological criteria after verification in the process. The oocytes are warmed and inseminated with ICSI two to four hours later.

Donor Screening

We receive over 100 donor inquiries weekly but we accept only a small percentage, employing rigorous medical, psychological, and genetic screening. The World Egg Bank follows donor screening protocols outlined by the FDA regulations and ASRM guidelines. Additionally, we are compliant with other state and international standards, such as Australia, the UK, Canada, California, and New York. We screen our donors for Fragile X and autosomal recessive disorders per ACOG and American Society of Human Genetics guidelines. Additionally, the donors fill out an extensive questionnaire regarding their personal and family history of significant heritable disorders. This history may disqualify some additional candidates. Our donors take the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and undergo psychological screening and genetic counseling prior to be accepted.

The World Egg Bank Advantage

• We charge no fees to the practice. There is no contract between The World Egg Bank and the fertility practitioner.
• Rather than handling the cost and complexities of an in-house donor egg program, many physicians find dealing with The World Egg Bank to be a simple and risk-free alternative. Our coordinators speak to the patients directly; we answer calls the same day.
• Practices utilizing The World Egg Bank for donation may perform freezing of oocytes for their own patients and may choose to use other banks in addition to The World Egg Bank.
• The World Egg Bank’s operational processes have been honed by ten years of experience. We have distributed more than 500 shipments nationally and internationally since 2006.

Considerations for Doctor and Patient Discussions

Many doctors are stymied by the transition from fresh to frozen donor eggs. As a new option for patients, doctors are concerned about how to reframe the risks and advantages of using frozen donor eggs.

Doctors and patients are fearful of a ‘poor thaw outcome,’ or no embryos for transfer when using vitrified ova, which are both devastating results for all. Yet doctors and patients are familiar with the equally concerning risks associated with a fresh donor cycle: the donor may not properly follow protocol in a fresh cycle, she may not produce very many eggs (< 5), the eggs may not be good quality, she may not successfully pass her screening tests or will withdraw from the cycle. Also, cycle synchronization and coordination for a fresh egg donor cycle can take months, increasing the anxiety in an already stressful situation for the patient. These risks, limitations, and costs, are eliminated with frozen donor eggs.

Our experience has shown that poor thaw outcomes or no embryos for transfer are generally due to one of two reasons: 1. Lack of strict adherence to our proven thaw protocols (for example, if an ova is not located off the vitrification device within one minute, the ova may appear normal but can result in impaired morphology and reduced viability in the developing embryo). 2. Lack of experience (the technology is new, or the ongoing skill level is not maintained). Locating the ova is one of the most difficult steps in egg thaws and this takes practice, as with any new technology Our thaw training and ongoing training program will support adherence to our proven protocols and maintaining skill levels in labs with little or intermittent experience with egg thaws.

As a new paradigm, egg banking can be seen as a failure if there is a poor thaw result or no embryos for transfer. Both are extremely difficult for patients to accept and difficult for doctors to place in context when compared to fresh cycles. Ultimately if a clinic has a 50% – 60% overall pregnancy rate, and frozen egg data is exactly comparable on a per egg basis, only the psychological hurdles have changed and not the outcome. In fact, a couple can begin their cycle with frozen eggs, knowing that they are guaranteed vitrified oocytes at the outset of their attempt, and reduce costs by half if they become pregnant with the first cohort of 6 or 7 eggs.