Egg Freezing
Egg freezing is a method of collecting and preserving a woman’s eggs in liquid nitrogen ‘deep freeze’ for possibly many years until she is ready to use them to try to conceive. Egg freezing may also be referred to as oocyte cryopreservation.
This section outlines the three egg freezing services MFS offers:
- a ‘rapid-response’ emergency egg freezing service for cancer patients
- a comprehensive three-stage elective egg freezing service for:
- women at risk of premature ovarian failure or early menopause
- women who need to delay conception while receiving non-cancer medical treatment
- single women who wish to ‘preserve’ their fertility
- an alternative to embryo freezing for patients who require IVF or ICSI treatment
Eggs are the largest single cell in the human body and until recently, freezing and thawing them without damage was a scientific challenge. Now, with the birth of hundreds of healthy ‘frozen egg babies’ around the world, new techniques to successfully freeze and thaw eggs give the chance of genetic motherhood to some women that previously were not available.
However, egg freezing offers no guarantees of successful future conception and pregnancy and it is always preferable for women not to delay conceiving if possible. The chance of a woman achieving a successful pregnancy is higher when she conceives before the age of 35.
MFS has held a license for egg freezing from the HFEA since 2000 and, to date (June 2009), continues to be the only UK clinic to have achieved livebirths following the freezing of the mothers’ own eggs and the subsequent thaw, fertilisation and transfer, after the birth of four babies since June 2002.
These livebirths were achieved using a ’slow-freeze’ procedure, but since 2008 MFS has also been able to ‘flash-freeze’ - that is to preserve eggs using vitrification, a process which may improve pregnancy rates by increasing the survival rates of the eggs after thawing from 65% to 95%.
Costs
Cost of ovarian reserve test at MFS: £275
Cost of the elective egg freezing preparation service at MFS: £425
Cost of egg freezing at MFS: £2,600