Follow-up assessment of excluded oocyte donor candidates

In 2005 16,161 fresh and frozen egg donation embryo transfer cycles were performed in the U.S.A. Use of egg donation continues to increase and, as such, the number of women who apply to be egg donors will also increase. Up to 44% of women who apply to be egg donors will ultimately be rejected. We suggest that women pursuing egg donation may not anticipate that they may be excluded from the program. Further, we suggest that many of them are unprepared to receive the information that they have been rejected from an egg donor program based on either medical or psychological grounds. In this brief report, we share our clinical experiences with women who were rejected from our egg donation program. We suggest that egg donation programs have an ethical obligation to follow up with women they have rejected from their program.

This paper reports on the experiences of the excluded donors from our clinic and reveals that being excluded creates a negative emotional impact which can include disappointment, fear, anger, and sadness. For most excluded donors this reaction is short-term but for some it is more long-lasting and more seriously upsetting.

The scope of this paper is limited in that it reports on clinical experiences rather than results of a controlled study. This paper suggests that researchers and clinicians have an ethical obligation to follow up with rejected donors to assess and address the emotional impact of being excluded from a donor program.