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IVF with donor eggs in Europe for Australian patients. How to start & proceed?

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5 fertility expert(s) answered this question

Answer from: Daniel Alexander, MUDr

Gynaecologist, Physician
Gennet
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Australian or all other cross-country patients are cordially welcome to our clinic. We have an international patient office department with coordinators in English, German, and Italian. So, the best is to start through our web page and they will answer your chat, email, or phone immediately. They will start planning with you on what we need, such as initial examinations or information from you, and they will start planning an initial consultation for you. Of course, if you’re coming from Australia; in most cases, there is Skype, phone, or WebEx consultation available.

Answer from: Elena Santiago, MD

Gynaecologist, Fertility Specialist
Clinica Tambre
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Clinica Tambre has a wide experience with egg donation treatments with patients from abroad. What we do is keep in touch with them by Skype or by e-mail, so that we can explain the whole process to them. We also need them to give us their medical histories, and we will ask for blood tests before starting with the process. Afterwards, when that is done, we will schedule rough dates for the treatment – normally, we synchronize the donor with the woman who will undergo the treatment for the endometrial preparation. We can give all these instructions by e-mail or Skype as well, and they can do all the preparation with their doctor in their home country.

Afterwards, when the endometrium is prepared, we will advise them when the donor is going to do the retrieval, and on the same day as the retrieval, we will need the sperm sample for the fertilization, and five days after, we will do the embryo transfer. So, we will only need to have the patients here in Spain on the day of the egg retrieval for the sperm sample and five days after the transfer. They can even go back home the same day as the embryo transfer. As you see, it’s quite easy to do these types of treatments – we can keep in touch all the time, and we have many patients doing this process, and the distance doesn’t matter. Even with patients coming from Australia, for example, they come to Europe for this type of treatment, and we have experience with Australian patients.

Answer from: Victoria Walker, MD

Gynaecologist, Fertility Specialist
Institut Marquès
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The next question is IVF with donor eggs in Europe for Australian patients, how to start and how to proceed. So I’m lucky that I work closely with many doctors in Australia, and I really do love receiving Australian patients. They seem to be so easy to work with. So we would start by organizing the first visit via Skype that usually lasts an hour or so. And we go through the patient’s history and make sure they really do need egg donation. And then we’d explain the logistics of treatment. And usually, it’s very easy, and it goes pretty much like this: so often the Skype visit is done well in advance of when the couple wants to be, or the patient wants to be in Europe. So let’s say, for example, I might have a visit with someone from Australia now, and their treatment isn’t going to be until the summer. So six months difference. So they can tell me the exact time frame that they would like to be in Europe. And so we need them to be available in Europe for two weeks.

About two months before these two weeks, the patient will start with the contraceptive pill to be able to synchronize the matched donor. And normally, the recipient will take this for three to six weeks whilst we line everyone up. Then the recipient and the donor stop the contraceptive pill. At the same time, they both have their periods. The donor starts IVF, and the recipient starts oestradiol, usually in oral form. Then after about a week of oestradiol, the recipient has a scan in Australia and sends us the result. And hopefully, it’ll show that the endometrium is trilaminar, and there’s no or very little activity in the ovaries. Then the patient, the recipient, starts their journey to Barcelona, usually arriving around 10 or 11 in their cycle. Often we’ll ask their partner if they have one to leave a sperm sample to freeze on day one so that the couple can then spend a few days travelling or just recovering from their trip. Although a patient can leave a fresh sample, too, if he wants to, that’s no problem. We then wait for the donor to be ready for her collection. Usually, this would occur in the first week of the couple’s stay or the patient stay. And once that happens, we fertilize the eggs and confirm when embryo transfer will take place and at the same time will confirm when to start progesterone supplements vaginally pre-transfer after the embryo transfer, the recipient needs to continue with both progesterone and oestrogen until the pregnancy test. And if that’s positive, they need to increase the doses and continue for eight weeks more. So that’s the general outline.

But what are the special considerations that we need to make for Australians? We do ask the Australians to be in Europe for two weeks, and we do this to make sure we have time for the donors to give her eggs and then have an embryo transfer. And we also prepare a backup donor. Just in case something goes wrong with the main donors, ovarian stimulation, I mentioned that the recipient would be on the pill, but we also give her another medication, a sniffer medication called Sinoral. And we use this as a kind of belt and braces approach to make sure that the recipients period definitely doesn’t come. And that would make sure that we can definitely do transfer when we say it’s going to happen. We also use preimplantation genetic testing a bit more with Australian patients that we might with European patients. And that’s because often the Australian patients really only want to come back if they’re certain the embryos are really good to use that genetically normal and so forth. It’s such a long way to travel. They don’t want to go for anything less. We emphasize that there is no evidence, at all, that long haul flights will reduce the chances of an embryo implanting. So if patients want to return to Australia straight after transfer and do the pregnancy test at home, that’s fine. You don’t need to stay for the full ten days waiting for the pregnancy test. And because of the time difference between Australia and Spain, we tend to communicate after the first visit via Skype. The rest of the communication tends to go via email, and we have three members of staff attached to each patient to make sure that that email conversation flows well, despite the time differences.

Answer from: Luboš Vlček, MD

Gynaecologist
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So, IVF treatment in Europe with egg donation, specifically in the Czech Republic, is quite easy. The Czech Republic is a small country in Central Europe, which is often a point of interest for patients from all around the world. It is because of the very liberal laws and regulations and priced treatment of infertility. The Czech Republic is a part of the Schengen area, so if you get a visa for the Schengen area, there is no problem.

There are many countries worldwide, which are offering IVF treatment with donor eggs, but the infrastructure here is very good, with very good equipment, and it has been built for years, thanks to the laws introduced in 2005. Nowadays, there are more than 48 clinics in this small country. The start in our clinic is very easy, you go on the internet and type “donor eggs – the Czech Republic”, and you get a link – our company is called Gynem.

You keep in contact with our coordinators, and they start to chat with the patients. After a short chat, the coordinators exchange email addresses with the patients, then the coordinator sends the most important information via email and this is the beginning of the whole communication process.

Afterward, they discuss the time for the appointment or for the Skype consultation with the doctor, where the doctor should answer any of the patient’s pressing questions. Then, the coordinator takes over the process again. Usually, the treatment starts in Australia, so before we exchange emails, we contact the patient(s), we pair up the donor and the recipient, we start the synchronization of the cycles, for example, by the birth control pill.

This synchronization between the patient and the donor usually takes two to three months, and afterward, the patient can come to the Czech Republic, especially on the day when the eggs will be collected, as we will need the sperm from the partner. The eggs will be fertilized with the sperm from the partner, and then later, at the stage of the blastocyst, the embryos will be transferred. So, it means that for the patients, it requires a 7-10 day stay in the Czech Republic, and afterward, they can return to Australia.

Answer from: Jennifer Rayward, MD

Gynaecologist, Fertility Specialist
IVF-Life Group
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For our patients who live outside the country, we have an international department that coordinates their treatments. We first ask our patients what dates they are available to be in Spain, and we plan from there. About six weeks before the egg retrieval date, we send the donor’s characteristics to the patient. Since donors are anonymous here in Spain, we can only tell the patient the blood type and physical characteristics. We have a dedicated nursing team who is responsible for finding the best match for every recipient.

We offer our patients every opportunity to speak with the nursing team and to communicate their queries. The nursing team uses the latest technology for the selection process. We recently incorporated facial recognition software for our donor database, so when a recipient asks for a donor, the software identifies, based on biometric information, who the best matches are.

The nursing team then presents the results to doctors, and a proposal is put forth for the patient to give the final approval. Once the patient accepts the donor, we send a treatment plan, so she knows exactly what to do each day. We’re in constant contact with the patients to make sure that the cycle goes smoothly.

About this question:

How to begin your egg donation treatment in Europe if you’re based in Australia?

Australian patients interested in IVF often consider receiving treatments abroad. While the United States is geographically closer, the costs of treatment often discourage patients from seeking help there. Europe quickly emerges as a more budget-friendly alternative, offering the same – if not better – quality of care as in the US. How to plan your treatment on the other side of the globe? Where to start? Which country to choose?

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