CARE Fertility Egg Bank
Egg Donation IVF using frozen eggs with CARE
CARE Fertility has one of the largest frozen egg banks in the UK. Access to the CARE egg bank empowers you to make the very personal decision about your donor and offers wide choice to most patients. You will be able to select your donor online and then have your IVF treatment at one of our world leading clinics.
Our purpose is to help you achieve your dream
As one of Europe's most successful providers of egg donation treatment, we truly understand our patient's needs and we care about your future family. We are completely aware of what donation means to you and we designed our egg donation programme with you in mind. You'll receive the very best care and comprehensive personalised treatment plans together with choice and flexibility in your treatment.
The benefits of using frozen eggs with CARE Fertility
- Excellent success rates. We do everything we can to give you your best chance of success. Our success rates are comparable whether you use fresh or frozen eggs. Our clinical pregnancy rate in 2019 was 48% for treatments with frozen eggs and 47% for treatments with fresh eggs.
- A more flexible approach to treatment - your embryo transfer can be done with your natural cycle, or at a time that suits you. Because we have already collected and frozen the eggs, you won’t have to synchronise with your donor’s cycle
- No treatment disruptions. Sometimes, synchronised (fresh) cycles sadly have to be cancelled at the last minute if a donor’s stimulation doesn’t go to plan. In a frozen egg cycle, the eggs have already been successfully collected and carefully frozen in our lab, ready to be thawed for treatment at your convenience.
- More certainty. There will be less chance of cancelled cycle which can happen when using fresh eggs either due to your donor pulling out for personal reasons or because not enough eggs are collected
- Reduced stress and anxiety. Our fresh donor programme is highly successful and will remain the appropriate choice for some of our patients. However, our frozen egg programme reduces anxiety as we can provide your treatment cycle around you rather than your donor, with the assurances that the eggs are already collected and waiting for you.
- Quicker Treatment. There can be a shorter time between choosing your donor and having treatment as you will have a bank of already-collected eggs to choose from.
“Nothing is impossible, and with the right people with you, the dream of becoming parents is achievable.”
What is frozen egg donation?
In the past, eggs have been more difficult to successfully freeze than sperm which is why egg donation has generally involved fresh egg donation in synchronised cycles. We freeze with a process called vitrification that allows eggs to be frozen and thawed successfully without being damaged. This method freezes eggs instantly at -196⁰C using liquid nitrogen and is so effective that an estimated 85% of eggs survive the freeze-thaw process.
Thousands of babies have now been born worldwide from treatment using previously-frozen eggs and we are using this technology to offer frozen donor eggs from our bank for immediate treatment without the need to synchronise cycles with an egg donor.
As this is a relatively new technology, there are no up to date national statistics available showing pregnancy rates, but the use of frozen eggs is well established at CARE Fertility, and our own clinical pregnancy rate in 2019 was 48%, this compares favourably with our clinical pregnancy rate using ‘fresh’ donor eggs which was 47% over the same period.
At CARE Fertility, we believe that our ability to manage every aspect of donor recruitment, screening and egg-freezing gives our patients an advantage in comparison to other clinics where the only option may be to use frozen eggs imported from international overseas egg banks. We can maintain excellent quality control by freezing and thawing eggs in laboratories across CARE Fertility using identical procedures. This is important because thawing success is dependent on the freezing and thawing methods in different laboratories being fully compatible.
Frozen eggs can only be fertilised by intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI): where a single sperm is directly injected into an egg, so all our treatments using frozen eggs use ICSI. ICSI is used regularly for IVF treatment and if you are considering using frozen donor eggs we recommend that you read our information leaflet on ICSI.
Selecting your egg donor from the CARE Fertility egg bank
We have included all our donors in our CARE Fertility egg donation database. Each donor has a profile to help you locate your ideal donor. Once you have found a donor you would like to use, we will contact you to discuss next steps.
Our experience and knowledge of egg donation means that we will be able to answer any questions you may have and take you step-by-step through the process.