Egg Freezing has become quite popular over the past few
years. Women find it appealing to be able to preserve their fertility for
medical, lifestyle or career reasons. A variety of companies including Apple
and Facebook even assist their employees with the financial costs of Egg
Freezing. According to WebMD, there have now been more than 2,000 live births
from frozen eggs, about 1,000 within the past 5 years.
The Egg Freezing process is done for a variety of reasons:
• Cancer
or other radiation treated diseases
• Delay
motherhood to pursue educational, career or personal life goals (fertility
preservation)
In order to retrieve eggs for freezing, a woman undergoes
the same hormone-injection process as in-vitro fertilization. The only
difference is that, following egg retrieval, the eggs are frozen.
It takes approximately 4-6 weeks to complete the egg
freezing cycle and the steps are the same as the initial stages of the IVF
process including:
•2-4 weeks of birth control pills to temporarily turn off
natural hormones
•10-14 days of hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries
and mature multiple eggs.
Once the eggs have adequately matured, they are removed with
a needle placed through the vagina under ultrasound guidance. This procedure is
done under intravenous sedation and is not painful. The eggs are then frozen
within few hours.
The Virginia Center for Reproductive Medicine recommends and
practices a newer freezing technique called Vitrification. This process is
ultra-rapid cooling (not true freezing) and reduces potential egg freezing
risks. Frozen embryos remain viable for an infinite amount of time after the
initial freeze.
When a woman is ready to try to conceive, the eggs are
thawed, fertilized using OCSI with partner’s sperm, and transferred to the
uterus 5 days later as embryos. This process is called Frozen Embryo Transfer
(FET). The eggs will be the exact age and quality of the time period she froze
them, regardless how many years have gone by. The pregnancy success rates
related to a Frozen Embryo Transfer depend on the women’s age at the time she
froze her eggs.
The Virginia Center for Reproductive Medicine invite you to
learn more about the Egg Freezing process by visiting:
http://www.vcrmed.com/other-services/egg-freezing-program/
