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By Amy Norton
NEW YORK, Mar 13 (Reuters Health) - Throughout the 1990s, egg donation became an increasingly common part of infertility treatment for women. While the ethics of the practice have been debated--such as whether it is acceptable for donors to be paid for their eggs--less attention has been paid to whether the procedure of extracting eggs from a healthy woman puts her at undo health risks. Now a researcher reports that egg donation can cause serious complications, but rarely.
Among 1,000 cases involving paid egg donors, serious complications such as bleeding occurred less than 1% of the time, according to findings published in the February issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Dr. Mark V. Sauer of Columbia University in New York City reviewed his own patient cases between 1987 and 2000. He found that the most common problem--occurring in three patients--was ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a condition that can potentially lead to heart and kidney complications.
The condition is a known but infrequent complication of egg donation, which involves using drugs to stimulate egg production in the ovaries. In the case of Sauer's patients, the three women were hospitalized, where their conditions resolved. The other complications included bleeding in the abdomen and severe reactions to anesthesia.
While these complications have been known to occur, it is unclear whether all fertility clinics fully inform women of them before egg donation, Sauer told Reuters Health.
This study, he said, documents a complication rate that fertility clinic doctors can use in advising prospective egg donors. And it gives them specific risks to describe for women, Sauer added.
"That's what informed consent is all about," he said.
Informed consent is a standard of medical ethics that holds that a person must be fully advised on a procedure's risks before agreeing to it. But it remains unclear how often egg donors truly give informed consent. Recently, a small study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested that many women may go into egg donation without being fully aware of the health risks or what happens to their eggs after donation.
According to Sauer, the complication rate in his study is comparable to the rate seen among infertile women who undergo in vitro fertilization. What is different, he noted, is that it is more jarring when women suffer complications from a procedure that is not treating any medical condition.
Still, Sauer said, this low complication rate "shouldn't frighten" potential donors, and egg donation remains a "reasonable option" for healthy women.
SOURCE: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 2001;184:277-278.
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