Egg Freezing and Fertility Preservation
Egg Freezing and Fertility Preservation
For women the "fertile time clock" sets the limit on chances of pregnancy over the years. The impact of time is only too evident in the graphs showing drastic declining fertility from the mid thirties onwards
For years, while IVF technology allowed sperm or embryos to be frozen, the ability to freeze an unfertilized egg eluded us. To a degree it has or was the holy grail. A New cryopreservation technique - vitrification suddenly changed this and now the holy grail is achievable.
A woman may wish to freeze her eggs for a number of reasons, both medical and social. Medically, for example, if a patient is diagnosed with cancer, she is likely to require chemotherapy or radiotherapy. These treatments will often result in infertility. If she has frozen her eggs prior to her treatment she has a chance to use these in the future, allowing her to have a baby when she would possibly not have the chance without having been able to store eggs prior to her cancer treatment.
While historically medical reasons dominated prior to vitrification because the old techniques offered poor success rates. With egg vitrification the concept of women opting to preserve their fertility by egg freezing at a younger age, to protect against potential inability to conceive in later years is now a reality!
Social egg freezing offers the woman the chance to "bank" young eggs with higher chances of pregnancy and lower chances of fetal anomaly than chances perhaps ten years later.
While still a new concept there have already been over 1000 babies born safely through egg freezing!
Women of today wish to be able to make an intelligent informed decision. Yes even IVF does not offer a guarantee of a baby at any age. But undoubtedly the chances of 32 year old eggs achieving a baby are 3-4 fold greater than 42 year old eggs! And the fact is that opting to undergo egg freezing is a relatively simple, safe process which offers to a degree an "insurance policy" which may be subsequently used. It is a woman's choice.
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