Southern California IVF Egg Freezing

As more and more women are putting off having children as they climbing the corporate ladder, become more established or wait to find a life partner. For many of these woman, egg freezing offers both an appealing and relevant option. They can now store their eggs before their fertility is lost or declines due to advancing age.

For the first three decades of in vitro fertilization, egg freezing with subsequent thawing, fertilization and creation of a successful pregnancy was a procedure with very low success rates. Unlike a fertilized embryo, the egg cell is filled with water. After it's frozen, the egg forms ice crystals that then damage the egg when it is eventually thawed.

For some time, the doctors at Reproductive Partners have been studying competing technologies designed to avoid this problem. A process called vitrification uses a cryoprotectant to make water in the egg harden without formation of ice crystals. This technique has now been demonstrated to yield better pregnancy rates than other techniques such as slow freezing.

Several programs using vitrification have demonstrated satisfactory freezing and thawing of eggs resulting in live births. Good fertilization rates after vitrification has also been improved by directly injecting a sperm into the thawed egg, a technique called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Implantation of the embryo is promoted by creating a small hole in the "shell" of the embryo by a technique called assisted hatching.

Egg freezing is particularly important for preserving fertility in women who need egg-damaging chemotherapy for treatment of cancer.

Egg freezing has been used primarily in women under age 38, with approximately a 50% ongoing pregnancy rate with freezing of 12 eggs. Results in women over that age would be speculative at best. At UCSD Regions Fertility Center, egg freezing will not be offered to women over age 42 and will be discouraged in women over age 40 because of poor results in these age groups. Women needing egg freezing will be stimulated in the same manner as for regular IVF. It may take some women more than one stimulation and egg retrieval to store enough eggs. The stimulation usually takes four to six weeks prior to the egg retrieval, after which women requiring chemotherapy can start their chemotherapy treatment regimen.

 

Last updated: October 2, 2009
Author: Dr. V. Gabriel Garzo

 

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