WHAT IS THIS PROCEDURE ?

Human oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) is a procedure to preserve a woman's eggs (oocytes). The eggs are extracted, frozen and stored. The intention of the procedure is that, in the future, the woman may choose to have the eggs thawed, fertilized, and transferred to the uterus as embryos to facilitate a pregnancy.

Some patients taking part in an IVF program have moral or ethical beliefs against freezing supernumerary or excess embryos and may prefer to store unfertilised eggs instead. The ability to cryopreserve eggs before fertilisation means that if they are surplus to requirements in the future, their disposal would not raise some of the moral or ethical dilemmas that the discarding of embryos may.

Embryo Freezing

A new technique of embryo freezing was introduced (VITRIFICATION) which is Currently an option at Dr Lad’s Navjeevan Hospital and IVF Center Nashik .

WHAT DOES THIS PROCEDURE INVOLVE?

Freezing of excess good quality embryos after IVF allows for the transfer of fewer embryos in the stimulated IVF cycle and, therefore, ensures fewer high-order (triplets or more) multiple births. This process provides patients with a "back-up" should the initial fresh embryo transfer not result in a pregnancy, at a much lower cost than starting IVF all over again and often with minimal medications. Frozen embryo transfers have allowed many of our patients to achieve more than one pregnancy from a single cycle of ovarian stimulation. Embryos can be frozen at any stage of development during the IVF process.

These embryos can be cryopreserved by freezing them in liquid nitrogen. Through a series of carefully orchestrated steps, the embryos are ultimately frozen at a temperature of –196 C, leaving them in a state of suspended animation in which they can remain for many years. Embryos that have been stored for more than 10 years have successfully generated pregnancies.