The Screening Process

The first priority in preparing a donor for an egg donation cycle is to ensure that she is fit to endure the process and that it is safe for the recipient parents to work with the donor and that neither the donor nor any child/children resulting from the cycle will have been harmed by any physical, genetic or other complication related to the egg donation process. The safety of the cycle, for all parties, is assessed through the screening process.

There are three phases to the screening process. The first is the agency driven pre-screening which we discuss at the Our Services page.

The second phase of the screening is clinic specific as each donor program is unique in its standards for deeming a candidate appropriate for egg donation. Once Prospective Families notifies your clinic that you have selected a donor and that the donor has agreed to cycle with you, we will submit to the clinic certain documents that will allow for an initial review of her profile and her current medical status. If the clinic is satisfied with the Donor Profile and the other medical information provided, they will contact the donor for the initial appointment. The acceptance into a clinic program is based on general clinic guidelines for fitness to donate as well as a review of whether or not this donor is compatible with your specific fertility circumstances.

At the initial screening appointment, the donor will meet with the reproductive endocrinologist who will run the cycle, the nursing team in the egg donor program, other egg donor team members, possibly the clinic's social worker and/or psychologist and she will be given a medical exam. Each of the team members will be responsible for screening the donor and a recommendation of whether or not you should pursue egg donation with this candidate will be made based on the aggregate of the team assessment.

Your clinic may choose, prior to making a recommendation that you cycle with this particular donor, to order a genetic screen. Some clinics do a genetic screen as part of the standard assessment, others will order a genetic panel based on a particular genetic matter unique to the recipient.

The third phase of the screening process involves blood-work. Donors are screened, via blood-draws, for nicotine and other drug use as well as for certain diseases. Also, in order to determine a candidate's readiness for fertility medications, a baseline blood-draw is typically done on Day 3 of the donor's next menstrual cycle.

Lastly, in addition to program specific screening, the FDA requires that all prospective egg donors, and her sexual partner, complete mandated infectious disease blood-tests. All clinics vary as to when the donor will do the FDA blood-tests but she should expect that she will be doing these tests twice and her partner, if any, may be asked to have the tests, once. Donors are screened twice for infectious diseases in an effort to confirm that while she may have tested negative at the time of the initial screening that she has not contracted an infectious disease since commencing the cycle.

With our recent affiliation with The Donor SOURCE, a division of Fertility SOURCE Companies, our Intended Parents will now have access to one of the nation's largest online egg donor databases. Get started below and search from among over 1200 active and available donors.

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