Egg donation with poor quality embryos, any chances?

Hello, everyone!
I’m terribly disappointed because I’ve just been through my first IVF with donor eggs attempt and the embryos we obtained were of poor quality as my physician indicated. I thought using donor eggs was a guarantee of high embryo quality, but now I can see that it’s not true. I was told my own eggs would give rise to nothing but non-viable embryos and had no choice but to use donor eggs, obtaining the same result as I would have gotten with my own eggs. If I had known, I would’ve given it a try, I wouldn’t have lost anything with that. My boyfriend has severe teratozoospermia and also oligospermia, too. To sum up, ours are C quality embryos, what are our chances?
What if it doesn’t work? Am I wasting my time?

Dear Wobbe Wobbe,

Eggs used for egg donation have been donated from young girls with normal ovarian reserve, which means they meet all the criteria to guarantee high egg quality. For this reason, we can first suspect that poor embryo quality may be due to male factor infertility.

The semen analysis (seminogram) of your partner is altered, both in terms of concentration and morphology, as indicated by the terms oligospermia and severe teratozoospermia. If there is a low sperm count and besides the semen sample shows poor sperm quality, they may contain genetic abnormalities which give rise to non-viable embryos even though they are able to fertilize the egg.

Grade C embryos are normal embryos, with lower chances for embryo implantation than grade A or B embryos, but that could equally implant and achieve pregnancy; in other words, do not throw in the towel yet, because you still have a chance. Anyhow, if this cycle didn’t work, I recommend your partner to continue undergoing semen analyses, such as the sperm FISH analysis, aimed at the detection of possible genetic abnormalities. Other treatments that could promote embryo implantation are IMSI or PGD. However, sperm donation could be considered as a treatment of last resort.

I hope I hace clarified all your concerns,

Regards