Are frozen donor eggs just as good as fresh? I get this question all the time. Actually, there is no right answer: it all depends on your own particular needs and desires.
Before you begin looking for a donor (fresh or frozen), my advice is to prioritize these major factors:
Cost: are your funds very limited, or do you have some flexibility?
Time: are you on a deadline (for insurance, your clinic’s age cut off, or some other reason)?
Selection: are you looking for a particular ethnicity, education level, or some other specific quality?
One of these three factors must be number one, and one must be number three. They cannot all be number one!
First, you should have a general understanding of the difference between fresh and frozen eggs. Think of fresh eggs as a product and frozen eggs as a process.
Frozen egg banks recruit, screen and cycle donors “on speculation,” then freeze the eggs in batches of six or so (two or three batches can result from a single retrieval). Since the screening and cycling is already completed, frozen eggs are the faster option, available to ship to your clinic right away to thaw, fertilize and transfer whenever you want.
Frozen egg banks compensate donors on the lower end of the scale, starting around $5,000. Because the retrieval results are divided and donors are paid less, frozen eggs are less expensive than fresh.
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