Why is double donation more expensive than embryo adoption?
Double gamete donation consists of performing IVF using gametes from an oocyte donor and a sperm donor to generate an embryo that is implanted, at the blastocyst stage, in the recipient patient. The process is anonymous in accordance with current legislation.
It is the Assisted Reproduction technique that currently offers the highest success rate. Among the reasons, the selection of the donors, in which exhaustive genetic and clinical examinations, analytical and psychological evaluation are carried out and where we perform a genetic matching between both donors to reduce the risk of the birth of a sick child to guarantee a safer donation. The young age of the donors also reduces the possibility of miscarriages, malformations or genetic anomalies. The cost of the whole process is usually high due to all the tests and evaluations and selection work behind the search for the right donors for each couple or patient.
Embryo adoption is a process in which a couple or patient is assigned an already generated embryo that comes from other couples who have previously undergone reproductive treatment and who have donated them for reproductive purposes. These embryos must meet the same requirements that the law requires for donors, that is to say, the age of the woman must be less than 35 years old and of the man less than 50 years old, together with negative serologies for infectious diseases.
These embryos, therefore, are frozen embryos and some of them are not the first choice embryos (they have already been transferred), which gives them a slightly lower chance of pregnancy. On the other hand, they do not have the same tests that donors have (genetic, etc.). For all these reasons, the cost is usually much more economical, since the embryo generation process does not exist (they are already done) and the assignment and search process is less.