Preserving Fertility through Egg Freezing is becoming more and more common globally.

Opting for Egg Freezing can be due to various reasons, one of the most important reasons is medical treatments:

• Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or any kind of radiation that could harm their ovaries, similarly many other medical procedures could hurt your fertility. Therefore freezing your eggs before doing any major treatment will give you a fighting chance to get pregnant after completing your treatment.

Some women choose Egg Freezing for social reasons:

• Not having found a suitable partner which seems to be the key motivating factor when seeking fertility treatment or those who wish to delay starting a family for personal reasons.

How does Egg Freezing work?

The patient will be given hormonal medication that stimulates the ovaries to produce mature eggs, which are then harvested during a short and minimally invasive surgical procedure.

These will then be frozen using vitrification technology, a fast-freezing process that ensures the cells remain structurally intact and are not damaged by the formation of ice crystals.

It is usually recommended that you freeze your eggs before you reach the age of 35.

Success rates

With the new fast-freezing method, more than 90% of eggs can survive and more than 70% can fertilize.

There’s almost a 50% chance of a woman having a baby if she freezes at least 12 eggs (usually with one cycle of egg retrieval) when she’s under the age of 35. For example, the average woman wanting to get pregnant at 42 would have about a 5-10% chance using IVF treatment with her fresh eggs, but using eggs she had frozen at say 32, her chances would rise to nearly 50% because it is the age of the egg that is most important.

Health risks

The risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome with the new stimulation regimen and freezing all eggs is very minimal.

By Dr. Ahmed Elbohoty

Consultant Reproductive Medicine & Infertility