Social Egg Freezing

Fertility preservation via egg freezing was originally offered to women for oncology or medical reasons, but in today’s era there is a big shift and “Social Egg Freezing” is available to every woman who is concerned about her fertility. In 2014, the FDA approved a cryopreservation method called social egg freezing, or elective oocyte preservation. It is the process by which any woman of child bearing age can freeze her eggs for the purpose of giving birth to a child at a later date. So, here we are using the medical technology to respond to a non-medical problem i.e natural aging.

Why is social egg freezing important?

Women have progressed over the past 40 years by obtaining higher educations or qualifying for higher professional advancements, and subsequently, are delaying family planning to achieve those goals. While we have advanced and evolved as human beings, our bodies are still stuck in the stone age in that our reproductive potential is bound to our age. Many women today are waiting until after age 35 to start their families and the number of live births of women ages 35 to 39 has increased by 150% over the last 15 years. With increasing age there is a gradual decline in a women’s fertility. A woman is most fertile from 20 to 30 years of age and thereafter it decreases gradually and more faster after 35 years. So, by the time a women completes her education, gets married and starts planning for pregnancy her ovarian reserve comes down. Social egg freezing acts as a boon for these women and gives her more reproductive autonomy.

How does the treatment process work?

It is done by the process of IVF. Medicines are given for hormone ovarian stimulation. Every month a woman will produce one mature egg (oocyte).In social egg freezing with the hormone medication the body produces about 15 to 20 eggs .Once the eggs are ready, transvaginal retrieval of eggs are done. These eggs are then cryopreserved at -190﮲c. Whenever a pregnancy is desired, the frozen eggs are thawed and fertilized with sperms via a process called Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI). The embryos are then cultured in the lab and once the embryos are ready they are implanted into the uterus. The process has a good success rate and the pregnancy rates can be as high as 60%-70%. Social egg freezing is a safe and widely accepted procedure and more and more women are coming forward for their fertility preservation.