Outcome for donors and recipients in two egg-sharing policies

Abstract Objective To assess the effect of two different donation policies on results of egg-sharing. Design Retrospective analysis. Setting Tertiary referral center. Patient(s) One hundred five donor–recipient pairs participating in an egg-sharing program between 1998 and 2001. Intervention(s) Egg-sharing was performed according to policy A (retrieval of at least 12 oocytes, with more oocytes allocated to the donor) or policy B (retrieval of at least 8 oocytes, with equal distribution of oocytes between donors and recipients). Main outcome measure(s) Delivery rate and cycle cancellation rate. Result(s) Policy B resulted in a decreased cycle cancellation rate in the recipient group compared with policy A (9.7% vs. 29.7%, respectively; P ≤.01). No significant difference in delivery rate per fresh transfer was observed between policy A and policy B in donors (30.2% vs. 27.8%, respectively) or recipients (28.2% vs. 25.7%, respectively). Conclusion(s) Decreasing the number of oocytes required to perform egg sharing from 12 to 8 and dividing the oocytes equally between donors and recipients significantly reduces the cycle cancellation rate while it does not appear to affect adversely the probability of delivery.