Egg donation or oocyte donation or ovum donation is used in women with poor egg quality or quantity or women with early menopause. Success rates with egg donation are comparatively high , particularly as compared to pregnancy rates in women with significantly diminished quantity and quality of oocytes , in women with premature ovarian failure , in women with poor ovarian response in earlier IVF stimulations , women with high Day 3 FSH levels, women over 40 yrs of age , women with very low count of AFC on day 2/3 USG , women with genetically transmitted diseases that could be passed on to her child.

An appropriate egg donor is chosen for the infertile couple by the fertility expert after her thorough screening for infectious diseases and genetically transmissible conditions. Donors are kept anonymous to the recipient couple. The egg donor after clearing all screening is stimulated to develop multiple eggs with injectable medicines. This is then fertilised later with the sperm of the infertile woman's male partner.
The infertile women ( also known as recipient) is also put on medications at the same time to develop a receptive uterine lining for the fresh embryo transfer in the same cycle. Egg donation is best done using fresh eggs. Doing egg donation with frozen eggs yields low success rates. But the success rates on the other hand with remaining frozen embryos is good.