IVF Cost

I work in a very large egg donor program (http://www.fertilityargentina.com/in-vitro-argentina/egg-donation-in-argentina/). I take care of patients coming from all around the world: specially from USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some countries of Europe and all South America. Why do all these patient fly overseas? Why do they decide to come to Argentina instead of going to other countries? Why is our program the leader?

Although I could write long explaining all the reasons, this time I will focus on our success rate and the guarantees that we give (next times I will talk about costs, tests done to the donors, the short waiting list and the simplicity of the whole process…you can read about the last seminars that I gave abroad here: http://www.fertilityargentina.com/dr-glujovsky-australia-4-days-brisbane-hobart-talking-patients/).

In our egg donor program we guarantee that all our patients receive at least 6 mature eggs. Most of them receive more than six. In fact, the average is 8-9. In the past, we published a paper showing our experience in shared egg donor programs (we were one of the pioneers on this), and we showed that receiving 4 or 5 eggs was good enough but, we also showed that when receiving 6 or more, success rate was higher and the freezing rate was increased too. And that is why we decided to guarantee at least 6.

Once the eggs are fertilized (we do ICSI to all of them) using own or donor sperm (according to the needs of the patient/s), we wait 5 days until we do the embryo transfer. We transfer the embryos only in blastocyst stage. We guarantee that all our patients have at least one blastocyst to transfer. What happens if, for some reason, there are no blastocysts to transfer? In that case, we pick another donor, with no additional cost, and we do another egg donor cycle again to finally have at least one blastocyst to transfer. 85% of our patients have more blastocysts and freeze some of them.

Why do we put so much emphasis to transfer on blastocyst stage? Because there is much evidence supporting the transfer on blastocyst stage. It is known that transferring on blastocyst stage is more effective (higher live birth rates) than doing it on day 3. Last year, I published a Cochrane systematic review showing all these data and then another paper at Fertility and Sterility confirming this (http://www.fertilityargentina.com/blastocyst-versus-day-3-embryo-transfer-systematic-review/).

In summary, one the keys of our success rates in egg donation are: guarantee of at least 6 mature eggs and guarantee of blastocyst transfer…in a great embryo lab. Next time, I will talk further about some other reasons why international patients come to Fertility Argentina for egg donation.

Dr. Demián Glujovsky, MD MSc
Specialist in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility
Master in Clinical and Heath Care Effectiveness
www.FertilityArgentina.com
Follow us: twitter.com/drglujovsky
facebook.com/dr.glujovsky