Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) including In Vitro Fertilization (IVF)
The IVF process can be broken down into 5 general steps:
Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)
Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)
Egg donation
At The Advanced Reproductive Center of Hawaii, our egg donation success is the star of our program. We are proud to have an egg donor pregnancy rate of over 75 percent over the last five years, and we are currently over 90% for the year 2007.
Donated eggs can lead to successful pregnancies for women with premature ovarian failure; women whose own eggs are of poor quality; women in the older reproductive age group (under age 50); and women with chromosomal translocations or genetic diseases that they wish to avoid passing on to their offspring. Donors may be a family member or friend of the woman desiring a pregnancy, or an anonymous volunteer screened by our program.
The egg donor process involves fertility drugs to stimulate the development of multiple follicles/eggs, just like in an In Vitro Fertilization cycle. At the same time, the recipient is coordinated with the egg donor’s cycle with estrogen and progesterone to prepare the uterus to receive the donated embryos. Sperm from the husband, partner, or sperm donor is used to fertilize the donor’s eggs, which are then incubated and placed into the recipient’s uterus a few days after egg retrieval.
All egg donors are screened before they are accepted into the program. Anonymous egg donors are healthy women between the ages of 21-32 who go through the following testing procedures before being accepted:
- Medical history and physical examination
- Testing for infectious diseases per FDA guidelines
- Screening for inheritable diseases through family health questionnaire
- Psychological assessment through the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and interview with a psychologist
Many recipient couples have a large number of embryos available through egg donation, which allows the possibility of freezing some for future use. The approximate cost of donor egg IVF in our program with donor work-up, medications, and an anonymous egg donor cycle is approximately $27,000-$33,000, which includes the fees to the donor and donor agency, stimulation of both the donor and recipient, medications, egg retrieval and embryo development, and transfer of the embryos.