Donor selection at Instituto Bernabeu: a very special and comprehensive care

Gamete donation plays a crucial role for a considerable number of patients willing to start a family and seeking the help of assisted reproduction techniques. These patients place their trust in the professionalism of Instituto Bernabeu in order to select the safest and most appropriate donor for them.

Gamete donation is a generous gesture that helps couples who cannot achieve a pregnancy with their own eggs and sperm to become parents, as well as single women or same sex couples that wish to start a family.

We are committed to the trust that our patients place in us and therefore we carry out an exhaustive selection process, so that each step of the donation is meticulous and meets all requirements, before the inclusion in our gamete bank. For this purpose, we study every possible aspect, even those that are not compulsory by law (for example, since the COVID-19 pandemic, testing the immunity of the donors, amongst other).

The selection of the safest and most appropriate donor to start a family is a strict process in which only the most suitable candidates can be accepted. At the same time, at Instituto Bernabeu, we are aware of the importance of looking after our donors as we deeply value their altruistic gesture. We care about their well-being and always give them a very special attention.

Stages of the selection process and exclusion criteria

We carry out very strict psychological, genetic and medical check-ups, and only those suitable candidates will eventually be able to become part of our donation program. According to the data of the first quarter of 2019, only 22% of the female applicants passed all the stages of the screening process to become donors. This percentage is even lower in the case of men: only 9% were accepted after applying our exclusion criteria.

THE EGG DONORS’ DATA IS DETAILED AS FOLLOWS:

In the first three months of 2019, Instituto Bernabeu had 510 candidates interested in donating eggs. In the five-phase process, as described below, only 56 women were finally accepted in our donation program.

• Our exclusion criteria are very strict. In the first screening, more than half of the candidates were discarded, as they did not meet the criteria of age, height or body mass index (BMI), among others.  After the first appointment, in which a study of the medical, personal and family history is carried out, 110 candidates remained.

• At the end of the next step, which is an appointment with a clinical psychologist for personal, social and psychological evaluation, 61 candidates were eligible.

• In the fourth stage, after carrying out a complete gynecological check-up and discarding multiple pathologies, 59 egg donor candidates remained.

– Finally, the last step is the genetic and infectious disease screening. This is the stage in which we perform a karyotype and also the Genetic Compatibility Test (GCT) that analyzes more than 600 hereditary diseases -3000 diseases since spring 2020-. Additionally, we discard abnormal results in the infectious disease screening and the presence of sexually transmitted diseases. In this phase, three applicants were discarded and finally, after applying our exhaustive exclusion criteria, 56 donors were accepted in the program.

Learn more about selecting the most appropriate donor for you

NOW WE WILL DETAIL THE DATA OF SPERM DONORS:

In the case of sperm donors, we had 500 applicants who were narrowed down to 121 after the first screening. This initial screening takes into account, among other criteria, the age of the donor, height, and an excessively low or high body mass index.

– Out of the 121 applicants who had passed the first stage, 30 men were considered to be suitable for donation after the analysis of their medical, personal and family history. The personal, social and psychological evaluation then ruled out two applicants.

– Another exclusion criteria is not meeting the required sperm quality according to the World Health Organization (WHO) standards. This reduced the number of applicants to 16 men. Out of these candidates, after the genetic and infectious disease screening, the final number was lowered to 11 candidates suitable for sperm donation.

More information about sperm donor selection

Instituto Bernabeu is distinguished by an exhaustive, detailed care and selection of gamete donors, a process that does not suppose an additional cost to the treatment.

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