Egg Freezing
Fertility Preservation Services
More and more women are delaying starting a family so that they can pursue their educational or career goals. While this is an exciting and important step for our society, it does make it more difficult for women who plan to have a family to conceive at an older age. This is one reason why so many women are making the decision to have their eggs frozen at a younger age.
Egg freezing is a different process from embryo freezing. This process only requires the extraction of an egg, and the cultivation of a healthy embryo can be performed later at a time of your choice.
Am I A Candidate for Egg Freezing?
Fertility preservation for women is usually recommended in your 20’s and early 30’s. This is when your body is the most fertile and will have the highest chance of success should you decide to have a child later on. You may also want to consider having your eggs frozen if you are at a high risk for cancer. Radiation from cancer treatment has been known to result in infertility. Barring a rare medical issue, virtually every woman interested in maintaining long-term fertility is a viable candidate for egg freezing.
The number of eggs you may want to have frozen will vary based on your age. For women under 35, 20 to 25 eggs should be sufficient. For women over 35, you should have at least 30 eggs frozen to make up for the reduced fertility rates of aging.
Egg freezing and success rates:
- For women under 35, freezing 20 eggs will have an 85% chance of producing a baby
- For women 35 to 37, freezing 20 eggs will have an 80% chance of producing a baby
- For women 38 to 40, freezing 30 eggs will have a 75% chance of producing a baby
- For women 41 to 42, freezing 30 eggs will have a 50% chance of producing a baby
The Egg Freezing Process
Once you have made the decision to freeze your eggs, the doctor may begin by performing a hormone-injection process similar to the injections used in in-vitro fertilization. At Hanabusa IVF, we sometimes alter this process as it is not always necessary to stimulate egg production drastically in younger patients. Our minimally invasive methods have proven to still yield a substantial number of eggs for preservation.
Once the eggs are ready, a doctor will use an ultrasound probe to guide a needle to the ovary and remove the eggs. The water content is then removed from the egg and replaced with an anti-freeze substitute that will allow it to survive the freezing process. Once frozen, you can retrieve them at any time, even years later, if you decide you are ready to try for pregnancy.
