Freezing Facilities

Egg freezing

Egg freezing is an exciting and potentially “life changing” assisted reproductive procedure offered at Concept Fertility Centre (Malaysia) for women wishing to preserve their fertility. It has 25 years of history with news of successes and setbacks. It is also known that human eggs have a very delicate architectural, but researches shown that it is freezable.

Clinical efficiency remains low, but healthy babies have been born which shows that normal embryos can be obtained from frozen eggs. The issue of egg survival after freezing procedure has required years of research and development in order to achieve major improvements. This research has improved remarkably in the past few years. IVF programs in countries such as Italy now routinely freeze any eggs retrieved greater than three due to local laws. These programs have had excellent success at improving pregnancy rates as these techniques have improved.

More recently, the usage of vitrification (quick-freeze) on freezing or cyropreserve eggs are a better alternative to slow freezing and it has been very encouraging. Vitrification is the process by which water in the cell is prevented from forming ice crystals due to the viscosity of a highly concentrated cryoprotectant cooled at an extremely rapid rate. To reduce the exposure to the toxic cocktail of cryoprotectants and prevent extreme dehydration, the eggs are exposed to the cryoprotectants for a very short period of time before being plunged directly into the liquid nitrogen.

Egg freezing is a relatively "new" procedure so questions about its effectiveness will remain for some years. For example, we don't have the clinical experience to predict how long frozen eggs will remain viable. We assume based on data from procedures such as embryo and sperm freezing, and other fields where frozen tissue is used, that the eggs will most likely remain viable for a patient's reproductive life span and longer.

Approximately 200 births resulting from frozen eggs have been documented worldwide. Results from cryopreserved eggs have been and still are, somewhat variable.

 

Survival rate	~ 60 %
Fertilization rate (with ICSI)	~ 70 %
Cleavage rate	~ 80 %
Clinical pregnancy rate	~ 10 %
Live birth	<5%

 

Who would need egg freezing?

 

Egg freezing is aimed at 2 particular groups of women:-

i) Those diagnosed with cancer and have not begun chemotherapy or radiotherapy.

ii) Those who would like to preserve their future ability to have children, either because they do not yet have a partner, or for other personal or medical reasons.

Over 30,000 reproductive-age women are diagnosed with cancer in Asia each year and it’s widely known that chemotherapy and radiotherapy are toxic for eggs and leave the women sterile after the cancer treatment. At this moment, egg freezing offers women with cancer the chance to preserve their eggs so that they can have children in the future.

Egg freezing can be beneficial for women who, for the purpose of education, career or other reasons, desire to postpone childbearing until later in life if they wish. Freezing eggs at an early age may ensure a chance for a future pregnancy. Additionally, women with a family history of early menopause or being diagnosed with Turner’s Syndrome will have an advantage to freeze their eggs earlier if in the likelihood that their eggs are depleted at an early age.

 

Pros and Cons of Egg Freezing

 

Pros

• Enable women to freeze eggs while avoiding ethical dilemmas for those who believe that life is created at the moment of conception.
• Allow cancer patients to preserve their fertility prior pursuing cancer treatment which can damage their potential childbearing.
• To give more flexibility to professional women to delay their motherhood.
• Vitrification technique has proven to give higher survival rate compared to conventional slow freezing method.
• Allow ooplasmic transfer from the oocyte donor to the recipient’s egg which contains element of cellular functioning to give rise to a healthy embryo.

 

Cons

• Egg freezing procedure is highly experimental and is not well-established.
• Increased chromosomal abnormalities in the eggs after freezing.
• Inconsistency egg cryopreservation survival rate.
• Approximately 60% survival rate after thawing. 2.5% birth rate per thawed egg.
• ICSI is the fertilization technique in view of the changes in the zona pellucida during the freezing and thawing process.
• Costly procedures as women are advised to undergo 2 or 3 cycles to collect enough eggs.