Throughout the cycle the donor is monitored often by a physician using blood tests and ultrasound exams to determine the donors reaction to the hormones and the progress of follicle growth. Once the doctor decides the follicles are mature, they will establish the date and time for the egg retrieval procedure. Approximately 36 hours before retrieval, the donor must administer one last injection of HCG hormone to ensure that her eggs are ready to be harvested. The egg retrieval itself is a minimally invasive surgical procedure lasting 20–30 minutes, performed under sedation by an anaesthetist, to ensure the donor is kept completely pain free. Egg donors may also be advised to take a pain-relieving medicine one hour before egg collection, to ensure minimum discomfort after the procedure. A small ultrasound-guided needle is inserted through the vagina to aspirate the follicles in both ovaries, which extracts the eggs. After resting in a recovery room for an hour or two, the donor is released. Most donors resume regular activities by the next day. Results
In the United States, egg donor cycles have a success rate of over 60%. (See statistics at http://www.sart.org.) When a "fresh cycle" is followed by a "frozen cycle", the success rate with donor eggs is approximately 80%. With egg donation, women who are past their reproductive years or menopause can still become pregnant.
In most countries other than the US and UK, the law requires such donors to remain anonymous. US donors are often recruited by agencies who act as intermediaries, typical with promises of money and altruistic rewards. Designated donors, e.g. a friend or relative brought by the patients to serve as a donor specifically to help them. In Sweden and France, couples who can bring such a donor still get another person as a donor, but instead get advanced on the waiting list for the procedure, and that donor rather becomes a "cross donor". In other words, the couple brings a designated donor, she donates anonymously to another couple, and the couple that brought her receives eggs from another anonymous donor much more quickly than they would have if they had not been able to provide a designated donor. Patients taking part in shared oocyte programmes. Women who go through in vitro fertilization may be willing to donate unused eggs to such a program, where the egg recipients together help paying the cost of the In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) procedure. It is very cost-effective compared to other alternatives. The pregnancy rate with use of shared oocytes is similar to that with altruistic donors. Procedure
Egg donors are first recruited, screened, and give consent before participating in the IVF process. Once the egg donor is recruited, she undergoes IVF stimulation therapy, followed by the egg retrieval procedure.