Oocyte freezing is a procedure which helps a woman freeze and stores her eggs and use them at a later convenient time to achieve a pregnancy.  Few thousand of babies are now born using frozen oocytes. The facility of egg freezing is available at almost all IVF centers.  Medical data from a recent meta-analysis suggest that specific outcomes of IVF and ICSI (fertilization and pregnancy rates) are similar between fresh oocytes and vitrified (frozen) oocytes.

What are the clinical situations in which Egg freezing is useful?

1. Unlike men, women are born with limited number of eggs which get depleted with time.  Oocyte freezing is a good option for women of today who prefer to first establish their career and then want to get pregnant.
2. Young girls or woman affected with malignancy have an option of freezing their eggs before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy.  Treatment with chemotherapeutic drugs and pelvic radiotherapy for cancer or other serious medical illnesses has the potential to markedly accelerate follicular atresia, placing women who require these treatments at risk of primary ovarian insufficiency.
3. Likewise, genetic conditions such as fragile X premutation and mosaicism for monosomy X also predispose women to primary ovarian insufficiency.  Women with these risk factors and others may be candidates for fertility preservation before ovarian failure.
4. Donor Eggs of younger women can be frozen and used for an elderly woman who wishes to get pregnant.

However, as stated in the ASRM–SART guideline, “there are not yet sufficient data to recommend oocyte cryopreservation for the sole purpose of circumventing reproductive aging in healthy women because there are no data to support the safety, efficacy, ethics, emotional risks, and cost-effectiveness of oocyte cryopreservation for this indication.”

How is egg freezing done??

Like in an IVF cycle the women is given injection daily to stimulate her ovaries to get more numbers of eggs.  When the follicles reach the right mature size, the eggs are retrieved under sonography guidance by aspirating the follicular fluid transvaginally.  One ideally requires to get 15-20 eggs for a successful pregnancy in future.

The eggs thus got are vitrified (frozen) by embryologist and stored in liquid nitrogen at -196°C. Mature eggs give better pregnancy results.  Whenever the woman wishes to conceive, the eggs are fertilized by partner’s sperms using ICSI technique.  Although the number of pregnancies conceived from IVF or ICSI with vitrified oocytes is small relative to fresh oocyte IVF or ICSI and frozen embryo transfer cycles, there currently is no evidence of increased neonatal risk from this treatment compared with other assisted reproductive technologies.  Additional follow-up of diverse patient populations is warranted to confirm these early reassuring outcomes.

It is rightly said “No Pain No Gain.” Hence the woman who is for egg freezing has to go through the pain of injections, procedure, and anesthesia.  It is a small price the woman has to pay to experience the joy of motherhood.