How do we choose the best donor for you?
Ova donation is increasingly requested by thousands of couples as a means of responding to their fertility issues. In order for procedures of this kind to work, female donors need to voluntarily undergo treatment so that the necessary ova for these patients can be obtained. Assigning the most suitable donor in each case is crucial and must be performed based on a range of criteria.
Selection
It is important to keep in mind that the aim is the birth of a healthy child and, in order to guarantee the safety of the procedure, selection of candidate donors includes a psychological assessment and medical assessment, analysis of the most common infectious diseases and a genetic analysis so that the most common hereditary disorders with a risk of transmission to offspring (cystic fibrosis, thalassaemia, spinal muscular atrophy, fragile X) can be ruled out.
Genetics
In addition, at Instituto Bernabeu patients can take an extended genetic test to analyse over 600 or 3000 hereditary disorders, depending on the format chosen. The aim is to identify and rule out that the donor and the recipient patient’s partner are not both carriers of the same genetic abnormality that could result in an effected child. This, in turn, rules out the risk of having a child who is a carrier. However, it is important to highlight that, despite all these genetic tests, it is not possible to entirely eliminate the risk of having a child that is affected by a disorder. The chances of this are estimated to be between 1.5 and 2%.
Similarity
Another aspect that must be taken into account when assigning the most appropriate donor to a patient is maximum compatibility with the patient and her partner’s physical characteristics. This entails taking race, blood group and features such as hair colour, eye colour and height into account. The team in charge of this process systematically gathers the most relevant characteristics of the phenotype for each patient and photographs for additional support. Our extensive experience in this field and the fact that we have large number of available donors means that, in most cases, we are able to do this without the need for long waiting lists.
Donation quality
Last of all, and in order to give our patients the very best chances of success, we guarantee donation of an appropriate number of oocytes. At our clinics, this is an average of 10 good quality oocytes, taking into account that they are retrieved from young women who undergo stimulation treatment that is optimised and supervised by an experienced team of doctors in order to guarantee the safety of the procedure.
Jaime Guerrero, a biologist at Instituto Bernabeu.
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