International Multicenter Egg Donation Program (IMEDO): preliminary outcomes

Italy has been the last European country to regulate medically assisted reproduction. The regulation was introduced in 2004 by Law 40. Law 40 was a very restrictive law and cancelled in Italy the possibility for couples to undergo heterologous assisted reproduction. Law 40 resisted to a referendum to cancel it in 2005. From that moment all Italian couples who wanted to undergo heterologous reproduction had to perform the techniques outside of Italy. In 2014, finally the Constitutional Court declared as unconstitutional the ban on using donor sperm and eggs in infertility treatments, thus opening the way to heterologous assisted reproduction. But unfortunately in Italy ten years of prohibition have cancelled the altruism of the Italian girls, and in Italy now there are only very few egg donors (1). Two other events were observed simultaneously: a) age on rise of patients in Italy approaching the assisted reproduction and b) improvements in oocytes cryopreservation techniques.