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LucyLu - April 25th, 2006 6:58 PM

Hello Dr. Smith, you helped in my decision to move on to a donor egg cycle and I am hoping you can answer a few more questions. The IVF clinic that I am using for my upcoming donor cycle is in another city, and the RE has indicated that they are fine using frozen semen if my husband cannot be there for the retrieval (he is a physician and has trouble juggling his surgery schedule on short notice). The embryologist said they always prefer fresh but frozen is fine (either given at their office on an earlier date, such as a week end, or shipped frozen in a special container from my fertility clinic where I live and am doing my monitoring). My husband has a very high sperm count and no other problems. In your experience/research, is frozen sperm as effective as fresh? What about transporting it?
Finally, this IVF clinic (which has success rates of around 68% in its donor cycles) uses a slightly different protocol for its donor stim cycles than regular IVF. The donors use Antagon-type drugs rather than Lupron (fewer shots for the donor) and uses a different trigger than HCG (I think she said Lupron?) which decreases the chance of OHSS. To your knowledge, do these protocols affect egg/embryo quality?
Thanks in advance for your help.


Dr Smith - April 26th, 2006 10:05 AM

As long as the sperm are in reasonable shape post-thaw, there should be no problem. If they look a little dodgey after the thaw, they will perform ICSI to achieve fertilization. Again, no problem. This is common practice in NYC where EVERYONE is busy, busy, busy.

We have heard about this protocol, but I do not have any personal experience with it or the resulting embryo quality. We are considering to start using this protocol on a few "test cases" as we speak (to avoid OHSS in donors). Sorry, but until we try it, I can't give you an opinion.

LucyLu - April 26th, 2006 11:58 AM

This clinic does ICSI as a matter of course in donor cycles, so it sounds like no problem.
Thanks for your help, as always.


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