What is egg freezing?

Egg freezing is a method of storing a woman’s unfertilized eggs to allow her to try to conceive at a later date.

Frozen eggs may be stored for many years without significant deterioration. When the woman is ready to use her eggs, they are warmed, and then fertilized with sperm and embryos transferred.

Effects on Child Born through Thawing of Frozen Egg

Thousands of eggs have been frozen over the last few years in different IVF clinics across the globe. The studies have shown that there is no increased risk for any abnormalities or birth defects in the babies born. These figures are indeed reassuring, but the research is on, and time will bring more facts about egg freezing and its implications.

Advantage

By freezing your Oocytes, you freeze your AGE. When you thaw oocytes and undergo IVF, and transfer embryos, say at 45 years of your age, the eggs will be still 30 years young genetically. In other words, you are Freezing your Time or Freezing your Age.

How does Oocyte Freezing work?

An egg is the largest cell in the human body. Sperms and embryos are technically easy to freeze. Egg contains a lot of water inside, and when frozen can form crystal ice, which can cause trauma to the cell. The newer techniques now, dehydrate the cell, and then frozen, thereby preventing crystal ice formation. This technique is called Vitrification used for cryopreservation of eggs or oocytes (technical word). Zoi Fertility only uses vitrification for all their egg freezing cycles.

Egg freezing success rate

Vitrification for egg freezing is a relatively new procedure and less than 5% of clinics are doing it since 2012. The chance of success is largely determined by the woman’s age at the time of freezing. Currently, we would expect we could retrieve 85% or more eggs which are frozen.

Success rates are lower for women over 35 than for someone who is in their twenties or early thirties.

Who should go for egg freezing

• Conditions affecting Fertility: There are multiple conditions like sickle cell anemia or autoimmune conditions. Such situations affect a women’s fertility overage. It is recommended to undergo egg freezing and save those for future use.
• Cancer: Patients who are diagnosed with cancer, usually need to undergo Radiotherapy or Chemotherapy. It does affect the ovarian tissue and the oocytes. It is strongly advised by us and the Cancer Specialist that you freeze eggs before the start of the treatment. In appreciating the extraordinarily stressful situation you are facing, we have also minimized the out-of-pocket costs for your fertility preservation treatment.
• Timing: For personal reasons, you are not in a position to have a baby right now and would like the opportunity to start a family after a particular age. Medically it may not be possible to achieve pregnancy then, as fertility potential declines with age. Such women should consider freezing eggs.
• Religion: Women having objections to storing fertilized eggs (embryos) frozen for religious or other reasons and thus planning to freeze the female gamete that is the egg.

Procedure for Freezing Eggs

The initial procedure for undergoing oocyte cryopreservation in any IVF clinic or Hospital is the same as that for an  IVF cycle. The woman undergoes hormonal stimulation with injections, to produce more than a few eggs in her ovaries. The difference is, these eggs are then not subjected to IVF or ICSI program. These eggs are directly put for vitrification.

The whole procedure can last about 2 weeks from day 1 of the cycle. The previous month will involve some blood tests and sonograms. Post this stimulation medication dosages are decided. After about 10-11 days of medications, the procedure where the needle is injected under anesthesia and eggs are retrieved through a pain-less 15 minutes minor surgery.

Costs associated with Egg Freezing

The costs involved are towards the following parameters

* The basic fertility testing to see the ovarian status and hormonal values
* The medications used for the ovarian stimulation to make eggs
* The surgical ovum pick up procedure, including pre and post-operative medications
* Vitrification of the eggs

These costs usually vary between INR 90,000 to INR 150,000 depending on the age, hormonal values, number of eggs retrieved to be frozen. At Zoi, the costs reduce if you do multiple Egg Pick Up attempts to freeze your eggs.

Risks associated with Ovum Freezing

• Fertility Drugs: Fertility Drugs are similar to hormones in our body but given at a higher dosage. These can cause temporary water retention, the increased size of ovaries can cause discomfort and abdominal pain. Other minor symptoms can be nausea, vomiting, bloating, etc.
• Hyperstimulation: With present drug combinations and stimulation plans, it is very difficult to have ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.
• Surgical Complications: Very rarely, a surgical egg pick-up procedure can cause the needle to hurt any organ causing bleeding or infection internally.
• Pregnancy Chances: The chances of retrieving healthy eggs after thawing, chances of creating good embryos after IVF fertilization, chances of pregnancy, and chances of miscarriage, all will primarily depend on the quality of eggs when they were frozen, and the age of the woman. If the embryologist or Lab is not trained or equipped with egg freezing, the success can be affected. At Zoi, we freeze the eggs of patients and donors. We have been doing it since 2014 and have frozen more than 1000 oocytes and recovered successfully 90%+ eggs after thawing. Arguably we have the highest success rate and experience in Mumbai, and India.