Should I go with IVF tandem cycle? Mix own eggs and donor eggs?

Tandem cycles that involve egg donation should be clearly discussed with your doctors. Sometimes patients are really attached to the idea that embryos resulting from tandem cycles will be only from their own eggs. You need to be clear in your mind that egg donation is the possibility, is right with your way of thinking. If your answer is “yes”, you can proceed with a tandem cycle. If your answer is “no” or you have any doubts about egg donation maybe you need to go for one more IVF with your own eggs and if it will not work, you can “close” that page in your life and proceed with egg donation. You should be clear in your mind if egg donation is the right way to go.

I’m not an expert because this clinic does not perform tandem cycles on eggs and donor eggs but I know it’s possible. You can go for it if you know that the chances of having your eggs or your embryos are low, you can go for your own stimulation and if you do not have eggs or you do not have embryos, you can still have a fresh transfer from donor eggs so that you do not lose your cycle.

It is a very common question: should I go for a tandem IVF cycle with own eggs plus donor eggs? I have to say it is not our strategy, and it is not what we encourage our patients to go with. It is because of two things. Firstly, when we did the risk and benefit assessment, we did not find a clear benefit for a patient.

Secondly, it is quite difficult to synchronize the fresh IVF cycle with the donor cycle. Therefore, as many of the patients proceed to the tandem cycle, they need to work with frozen eggs. And when we compare the success rate of the frozen eggs and the fresh donor eggs, we see it is not the same.

Tandem IVF cycle is about using your own eggs with donor eggs in one cycle. Unfortunately, academic research does not provide any evidence that the transfer of mixed embryos from the donor’s and the patient’s oocytes provide higher success rates. That is why at our clinic, we do not recommend our patients to go for a tandem IVF cycle. I can explain why.

Generally, in a tandem IVF cycle, we have high-quality embryos from the donor’s oocytes and lower quality embryos from the patient’s own oocytes. As we know, the uterus can identify the embryo quality and thus select the embryo of the highest quality and exclude the embryo of lower quality.

That’s why this can affect the growth of a good embryo. Especially, in the case of a pregnancy with two fetuses, the chance of having genetic abnormalities is very high for the lower quality embryo. This altogether may impact the development of the pregnancy negatively. So instead of a tandem IVF cycle, we recommend using genetic testing for embryos with NGS and transferring only one embryo of great quality, without any chromosome abnormalities.

Tandem IVF cycle uses both the donor’s eggs and the patient’s own eggs. It is never considered to be the first-line treatment. However, women, who for some reason cannot produce a good quantity of good quality eggs, can experience serial ineffective IVF attempts resulting in emotional burn-out. Under these circumstances, the egg donation program turns out to be your back-up plan. After the previous synchronization, the patient and the donor both begin the stimulation process at the same time.

Egg retrieval will occur on the same day. The eggs collected from the patient and the donor will be fertilized with the partner’s sperm. If the embryos developed from your eggs are of good quality, be sure that you will have them transferred. Then the donor egg embryos will be just frozen. In this case, the pregnancy success rate will vary according to your age. If the quality of the couple’s embryos is not appropriate for the transfer, the embryos developed from the donor’s eggs are transferred. This enhances your chances of pregnancy by up to 70%.