Egg Freezing

Ans: Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is a process where a woman’s eggs are extracted, frozen, and stored for future use. It is often considered by women who want to preserve their fertility due to age, medical treatments (such as chemotherapy), or personal reasons like focusing on career or not yet being ready to start a family.

Ans: The optimal age for egg freezing is generally in your late 20s to early 30s, as egg quality and quantity decline with age. While eggs can be frozen later, success rates decrease as you get older, especially after 35. Freezing eggs at a younger age increases the chances of successful fertilization and pregnancy later.

Ans: The egg freezing process involves several steps: ovarian stimulation with hormones to produce multiple follicles, monitoring of the growth of the follicles through ultrasounds and blood tests, egg retrieval under sedation, and then freezing the mature eggs using vitrification (a rapid freezing technique).
The process usually takes about 2-3 weeks from the start of the menstrual cycle to egg retrieval.
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Ans: Eggs can be stored for many years without a significant decline in quality due to advancements in freezing techniques. In the UK, recent regulations allow eggs to be stored for up to 55 years. The length of storage does not impact the quality of the eggs, as long as they were healthy at the time of freezing.

Ans: Success rates using frozen eggs vary based on the woman’s age at the time of freezing. For women who froze their eggs in their early 30s, success rates for live birth can be around 30-60% depending on the number of eggs frozen and other factors.
However, success rates decrease if the eggs were frozen at an older age.
It is important to remember, frozen eggs can’t be fertilised with simple IVF but IVF with ICSI as the “zona” of the egg (shell covering) has hardened during the cryopreservation.