PGD testing with donor eggs

[Anonymous]

I am trying to figure out how much I'd be reducing my chances of having a miscarriage if I did PGD testing on donor eggs. My doctor does not recommend it because the donor is young. It would be worth it to me to avoid a miscarriage, but I don't know how likely it is that I'd be avoiding a miscarriage versus putting healthy embryos through unnecessary testing. I also don't like the delay involved in doing the testing -- it would push everything back by a month. Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

I think I meant PGS testing, not PGD. The testing for chromosomal abnormality, not the testing for a specific disease.

[Anonymous]

I would side with your doctor here. We did PGD when we did OE IVF, but never considered it with DE. Your chances of having a chromosomally compromised embryo be the best one at day 5 or 6 from a 23 year old isn't worth the risk of hurting a perfectly healthy embryo. There are no guarantees, but this is a good bet. We got a healthy baby on the first try twice with DE.

[Anonymous]

One of the benefits of donor eggs is that it takes the level of risk down significantly on lots of fronts.

I wouldn't do it on donor cycles.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't do it with DE. I would ask the RE if he can check to see if your donor's eggs have had a successful pregnancy. A friend used a proven donor (she produced lots of eggs). But after a fresh cycle and 2 FET, all BFN. The RE looked deeper into the donor's record and found out that none of her massive amounts of eggs turned into a successful pregnancy.

[Anonymous]

I AM doing it with the DEs because I am older and don't want to waste time with another potential miscarriage or worse. What is 1500$ and another week for peace of mind? I thought long and hard about it and it is worth it to me to have the absolute best chance possible. I have waited so long for this baby and if things go well then we may be have to have a second. If I waste 4-6 months with a non-viable pregnancy and recovery I will never get that time back.

[Anonymous]

I'm OP. My thinking is the same as PP's. It's worth the money to me to not have to go through a miscarriage and to not waste that time. On the other hand, I don't know how much time I'll be "wasting" with PGS testing for each set of embryos (because I'm doing frozen donor eggs). Perhaps I need to talk to my doctor about how much I'd be delaying things by doing the testing. Thank you all for your input. It was helpful.

[Anonymous]

We did it and I'm very glad. Even with our young donor, only a third of our possibilities were normal. We were successful on the first try.

[Anonymous]

If you have the time and money. Just know that it is not an inoculation against miscarriage.

[Anonymous]

Good luck OP. The turn-around time on the testing for the facility that DF uses,EmbryVu, is 7-10 days. I think that is pretty standard.

[Anonymous]

I definitely recommend doing the PGS testing, even when using DE. We had 7 fertilized embryos at day 5 and only 1 of them had a normal chromosome count. I was completely shocked by this because the donor was young. We transfered the normal one but it didn't implant. Tried again with a new donor, had 8 embryos at day 5 and 7 of the 8 were normal so you just never know.

[Anonymous]

PP that is the main reason we decided to move forward with testing! You just never know and after all this time, money and waiting, why take the chance of another delay? We want the best chance for a BFP.

[Anonymous]

We did PGS testing on DE embies. We had had multiple failed cycles with three different donors. REs always said it wasn't "worth it" to PGS test DE embies. But, we ended up spending almost 100k on failed cycles with unscreened DE embies. When we did finally screen, we learned that about 80% of our embies -- even with DE -- were abnormal. Our second FET with a screened embie is now cruising into week 10. (Finger's crossed!)

I really, really wish we had "wasted" our money on DE with the first donor before we spent all that money and emotional capital going through all those failed cycles with unscreened embies. If I had a chance to do it again, I'd fork out the cost to screen, even everything came back normal.

[Anonymous]

^^^ this

[Anonymous]

I'm OP. I just spoke to my doctor, and she said it will delay things by a month. SG won't set a thaw date until after they have the test results back from PGS, so you end up having to wait out a cycle. I'm so exhausted from the many, many OE IVF cycles that I did. I don't have the energy to fight this, but the policy seems ridiculous to me in that worst case, you start estrogen and have to stop it because there are no PGS normal embryos.