What is Egg Freezing?

Egg freezing or so commonly called mature cryopreservation of oocytes (women’s eggs) is a technique that was developed to enable a woman’s egg to be extracted, frozen and stored as a method to preserve reproductive potential in women. A woman may decide not to have children at an early age, this may be due to reasons such as being busy at work or she prefers to pursue her education at first but may prefer to have biological children in the near future hence the need to undergo egg freezing process.

For egg retrieval, a patient undergoes the same hormone injection process as in vitro fertilization. The difference between the two is that in egg retrieval, they are frozen for a period of time before they are fertilized and transferred to the uterus.

Egg freezing consists about a week and a half of the hormone injections. The reason for this is to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs in one menstrual cycle instead of the single egg they would typically produce. During this period, there are about a week of short visits to the doctor including blood tests and Transvaginal ultrasound exams. This will help assess the individual’s response to medication and possibly make adjustments depending on how the eggs are progressing.

When the eggs are mature and ready to be “harvested” is when the surgery will take place. The surgeon will retrieve the eggs by insertion of a needle through the vaginal wall. This will sound grueling but the patient will be on anesthetics so no pain. As it is done by a needle there are no cuts whatsoever. The eggs will then be frozen using vitrification.

Shortly after your unfertilized eggs are harvested, they are cooled to subzero temperatures to stop all biological activity and preserve them for future use. The makeup of an unfertilized egg makes it more difficult to freeze and lead to a successful pregnancy than does the makeup of a fertilized embryo.

Age if a factor to consider when considering egg freezing. Women who undergo the procedure before they are 30 show the highest live birth rates. Therefore those considering egg freezing should do it when below 30 years to increase their chances of having live births.

Egg freezing has its own advantages making it one of the growing and trending technology in the medical world. One may decide to do egg freezing if she is about to undergo cancer treatment or another illness that may the fertility potential in future. Medications such as chemotherapy may harm a woman’s fertility. With such diseases egg freezing may be an option to have children at a late date when they have been cured.

As women age, the quality of their eggs diminishes. Just as the likelihood of conception in women decreases each month, so does the likelihood of having eggs with abnormalities. With egg freezing, women are able to protect the current health of their eggs and increases their chances of conception though IVF in the future

Those women planning to do egg freezing process should have it in mind that it might not work. This however is mostly contributed by what age the woman froze her eggs. The cumulative live birth rate of egg freezing for women above 36 years of age is very low.