Third Party Options

The first option is to find your own egg donor. Your donor could be a woman who is a friend or a relative. In addition, many people wish to use an anonymous donor who they may find by advertising. Please be advised that TRIO does not have a donor database, and does not find donors for patients. Our program is altruistic in nature as it is illegal to pay an egg donor in Canada, as per Health Canada regulations.

TRIO works closely with several fertility clinics that have excellent egg donation programs: Shady Grove Fertility, in Washington, D.C. and Fertility Centers of Illinois, in Chicago. Both of these Clinics have donor data bases from which patients may chose the donor they wish to use. These clinics would cycle the donor at the same time as the recipient, or intended parent, enabling a fresh rather than a frozen egg to be used.

“Although there are many clinics with egg donation programs in the United States, we only work with these two because we like their medicine, we like their procedures, and we trust them.” said Randy Rosenstein, TRIO’s Third Party Coordinator.

As a TRIO patient, your initial testing and your cycle monitoring are done here in Toronto at TRIO. In addition, several visits to the US clinic you’ve chosen would be required in order to meet with the US team, for the male partner to produce a sperm sample, and finally for the embryo transfer. Two weeks after the embryo transfer, you would return to TRIO for a pregnancy test.

The third option is to work with a frozen egg bank. TRIO is currently working with a small handful of frozen egg banks.

The patient or family chooses frozen eggs from the donor bank; the eggs are then delivered directly to the TRIO lab. All medical aspects of the treatment process take place at TRIO, including: receiving and thawing the donor eggs, fertilization of those eggs in the TRIO lab, and the transfer of the subsequent embryo (s) to the intended parent.

Our Third Party Coordinator, Randy Rosenstein, will put you in touch with the patient liaison staff at the egg bank clinics.

The most recent option available to patients is to create embryos using donor eggs. Here’s how this option works: an egg donor is selected from a database, usually in the US or elsewhere internationally. The male intended parent’s sperm is collected and frozen at TRIO. We ship the frozen sperm to the clinic that will be collecting the eggs from the egg donor. That clinic fertilizes the donor egg with the male partner’s sperm provided by TRIO. The resulting embryos are frozen, and then shipped to TRIO. We then perform the frozen embryo transfer at our downtown clinic.

Please note that any international form of egg donation and its associated medical procedures are not covered by OHIP. All fees/charges for services at international clinics as well as that of the egg bank are charged in US funds. Those fees are payable directly to those clinics, not to TRIO.