There is more demand today than ever for flexibility and options in life, and family planning is no exception. At Life IVF Center, we’re thrilled to offer our patients a full suite of cutting-edge fertility preservation options to help reach their fertility goals.
Egg freezing, known as oocyte cryopreservation, involves retrieving eggs then freezing and storing them for future use. When ready for pregnancy, the eggs can be thawed and fertilized with the resulting embryos transferred to achieve pregnancy.
While many women can benefit from Egg Freezing, there are several main groups who tend to benefit the most:
Patients wishing to preserve their fertility for personal or medical reasons, such as those diagnosed with cancer prior to chemotherapy, which can be harmful to eggs
Individuals who are undergoing IVF whose male partner / donor sperm is not available at the time of egg retrieval
Patients actively undergoing IVF treatment who do not wish to freeze embryos for personal or religious reasons
Trans individuals pursuing gender affirmation procedures and/or hormone therapy may wish to freeze eggs for future optionality regarding having biological children
Egg Freezing consists of the first two portions of the IVF process:
After retrieval, the eggs will be evaluated by an embryologist to determine if they’re mature and the mature eggs will be cryopreserved.
Immature eggs may be cultured for another 24 hours. Eggs that mature will be frozen and any not mature after additional culturing will be discarded.
Vitrification is a revolutionary freezing process with much better survival rates and egg development. We exclusively use vitrification and have achieved egg freeze and thaw survival rates over 95%. While many clinics freeze eggs well, most lack a skilled thawing team. Life IVF has top-tier thawing results driven by our extensive frozen embryo IVF protocol experience.
The ideal age to preserve eggs is around or before your mid to late 30s. However, oocyte cryopreservation can be done at any reproductive age.
At Life IVF Center, we have had patients successfully completing egg cryopreservation cycles from as young as 21 to as old as 49.
Embryo freezing allows patients to freeze their embryos for future use. These cases can be part of IVF treatment or as an alternative or supplement to Egg Freezing.
While the process is largely the same as Egg Freezing, embryo freezing takes place after the retrieved egg is fertilized with sperm and the resulting embryo develops to a certain stage. As not all eggs will successfully culture into embryos, only quality embryos will be chosen for cryopreservation.
When appropriate, we generally recommend freezing embryos instead of unfertilized eggs, with two primary reasons: improved success rates, and better information:
Since embryos and their many cells are more developed compared to a single-cell egg, they’re more tolerant of the freezing and thawing process. For example, if an individual cell in an embryo doesn’t respond well to freezing or thawing, the embryo is better able to replace the cell and repair itself as it continues to develop while an individual egg cell can’t.
With embryos, patients have the option to perform genetic testing to learn more information regarding their embryos. This includes whether the embryos have the correct number of chromosomes and their gender. This can be valuable information for better family planning.
Some patients at Life IVF Center elect to freeze a combination of fertilized embryos and unfertilized eggs to provide a greater level of optionality.
Discuss your case with one of our experienced clinicians to learn more about the process and how it might be a fit for your fertility plans.
Don’t just take our word for it.
