Donor eggs, donated embryos and gestational carriers: reading the CDC data
How CDC reports third-party reproduction, which clinics offer it, and why the donor numbers need extra care.
Many IVF cycles use eggs, embryos or a uterus from someone other than the intended parent. Clinics report these cycles to CDC too, and CDC's clinic data record which services each clinic offers. This guide explains how to read those parts of a clinic page.
The services CDC records
In its Services and Profiles data, CDC records whether each clinic offers:
- Donor egg services — IVF using eggs from a donor. In 2022, 88% of reporting clinics said they offered it.
- Donated embryo services — transfer of embryos created by other patients and donated. 61% of clinics.
- Egg cryopreservation — freezing eggs, for example for fertility preservation before medical treatment or to delay childbearing. 99% of clinics.
- Embryo cryopreservation — freezing embryos for later transfer. All reporting clinics.
- Gestational carrier services — cycles in which another person carries the pregnancy. 90% of clinics.
These percentages are CDC's national figures in the same dataset. Each clinic page lists the services the clinic reported, and you can browse clinics by service. A clinic that reports a service may still have limits — for example, it may work only with outside donor agencies — so ask.
Why donor results are reported for all ages together
When a patient uses her own eggs, her age drives the chance of success, so CDC splits those results into four age groups. With donor eggs, what matters most is the age and health of the egg donor, who is usually young. CDC therefore reports donor-egg outcomes for all recipient ages combined.
CDC splits donor outcomes by the type of egg or embryo used:
- Fresh embryos from fresh donor eggs — the donor's eggs are retrieved and fertilised, and an embryo is transferred in the same cycle.
- Fresh embryos from frozen donor eggs — eggs from a donor egg bank are thawed and fertilised, and a resulting embryo is transferred fresh.
- Frozen embryos from donor eggs — embryos made from donor eggs, frozen, and transferred in a later cycle.
- Donated embryos — embryos created by another patient or couple and donated.
Each is reported as a rate per transfer, along with the single, term, normal-weight birth rate per transfer.
Small numbers are the rule, not the exception
Most clinics perform far fewer donor transfers than own-egg cycles, and those are split four ways. As a result, many clinic donor tables show CDC's fractions (such as 7/15) instead of percentages, or asterisks where CDC suppressed a count of 1 to 4 for privacy. A fraction like 7/15 is honest but fragile: two more or fewer births would change the rate by more than ten points. Don't read much into differences between small fractions.
Gestational carriers
CDC's clinic data record whether a clinic offers gestational-carrier cycles, but the clinic success-rate tables are not split out by carrier use. Gestational surrogacy involves medical screening of the carrier, legal agreements and, usually, counselling. The law on surrogacy differs a great deal from state to state, so intended parents generally work with a lawyer experienced in assisted reproduction in the relevant states before any medical steps begin.
Questions to ask about third-party reproduction
- Does the clinic run its own donor programme, work with egg banks, or use outside agencies?
- How are donors screened? The US Food and Drug Administration regulates donor eligibility screening and testing for reproductive tissue, and ASRM publishes guidance on donor selection.
- What does a donor-egg cycle cost, and what is included — donor compensation, agency fees, screening, medication, legal work?
- How many donor-egg transfers did the clinic perform, and how many embryos does it usually transfer? Twins are common after donor-egg IVF when more than one embryo is transferred.
- For donated embryos: how does the clinic match embryos, and what information about the donors is shared?
Fertility preservation
Each clinic profile shows the number of fertility preservation cycles the clinic reported for 2022 — cycles in which eggs or embryos were frozen for possible future use rather than transferred. Nationally, CDC counted 40,039 such cycles out of 435,426 total ART cycles in 2022. Fertility preservation cycles don't produce a birth in the reporting year, which is one reason clinics with large egg-freezing programmes can look different on some measures.
The bottom line
For third-party reproduction, the service list on a clinic page tells you where to start, but the clinic-level donor numbers are often too small to separate clinics. Put more weight on how the clinic runs its donor or carrier programme, the full cost, and how clearly it answers your questions.