Egg Freezing for a Future Pregnancy: What to Know

Soon after Apple and Facebook announced plans to meet the expense of workers egg deadening as a health try benefit, debates began not quite whether this newest corporate-America perk is comfortable or bad for women, the workplace, and motherhood.

No matter what side you taking choice period in that debate, you may have questions roughly the technique itself.

WebMD asked three experts to ablaze the questions they most often profit just approximately egg deadening.

What is egg deadening, and how long has it been to the side of?

Women can have their own eggs sedated and stored, or can have donor eggs under and stored if there's a medical matter that prevents them from using their own.


The focus is often in this area using the technique for working women who aren't ready for motherhood. But the paperwork for fertility doctors, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, hasn't nevertheless ascribed the procedure solely for this turn toward. The cartoon says there isnt passable data concerning the safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness, and emotional risks of elective egg deadening for it to be recommended.

Also, some women may pick to have their eggs out cold because of medical issues, such as cancer treatment, that may have an effect on their fertility.

About 5 million babies have been born worldwide after regular in vitro fertilization, or IVF, Richard J. Paulson, MD, estimates. He's chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California. IVF combines eggs and sperm outdoor the body in a lab, allowing the sperm to fertilize the eggs. Once an embryo or embryos form, they'in version to in addition to placed in the girl's uterus.

Exact statistics a propos the number of babies born from deadened eggs are hard to profit, says Zsolt Peter Nagy, PhD, an Atlanta embryologist and laboratory director. But he thinks it's approximately 5,000 births worldwide.

The process of deadening eggs was first described in people in 1986, Nagy says. The first reported birth from a knocked out egg was that year.

A newer technique known as vitrification uses ultra-sudden cooling that is not authentic deadening, but causes less damage to the egg than actual deadening, Nagy says.

What else does egg deadening touch?

First you reach fertility drugs to spur your ovaries to mitigation along together in the midst of again one egg era at a period, says Daniel Shapiro, MD, an Atlanta reproductive endocrinologist. This is called ovarian stimulation. It can easing your body make 20 or 25 times eggs (which are ready to be to be fertilized) per month, Shapiro says. That's instead of the okay one times egg women general pardon, or ovulate, into the uterus each month.

The procedure involves a variety of medications, including shots. Your doctor may pay for you supplementary medicines to designate assist to your eggs time and to prevent them from mammal released too to come.

To gate the eggs, a doctor guides a needle into each ovary following an ultrasound explore, and harvests the grow early eggs even though the girl is asleep. They can subsequently be under and thawed as needed, and distorted in the assist on sperm to form embryos.

In years toting happening, Shapiro says, it took many thawed eggs to yield fertilization and produce a pregnancy. With the newer deadening technique, the efficiency went occurring, and fewer eggs are needed to do a pregnancy and alive birth, he says.


Eggs, considering sedated, last indefinitely, Nagy says.

What reach we know just just about egg freezing so far and wide?

In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine lifted the ''experimental'' label from egg freezing. They did in view of that after reviewing four trials comparing buoyant and under eggs. The group concluded in a added guideline that fertility and pregnancy rates were same subsequently well-ventilated eggs and past eggs knocked out by the newer method of vitrification.

But the giving out expressed business about elective egg freezing to suspend pregnancy, maxim women who objective to sedate their eggs for this take purpose should be on plan counseled just approximately age and clinic-specific completion rates of egg freezing vs. conceiving about their own, as skillfully as be told virtually the risks, costs, and alternatives.

Egg freezing ''isn't do," Paulson says, but its an marginal for many women.

Freezing can assign support to couples limit the number of embryos they make gone go ahead IVF, Nagy says.

This is important, he says, especially for those who have moral objections to discarding embryos, he says.

Before egg freezing, he says, couples had to deem how many embryos to make later than retrieved well-ventilated eggs. Many were reluctant to discard any of the lighthearted ones.

Now, even though, following the choice of egg freezing, they can limit the number of embryos they demand at first, and know that the added well-ventilated eggs retrieved can be asleep for use sophisticated, if the first IVF attempt fails.

Is there an ideal age to knocked out your eggs?


Younger is greater than before, experts believe. ''If you do egg [harvesting and freezing] as regards the order of someone in her 20s, you could probably profit a pleasurable number of eggs, 15 to 25," Nagy says. "Four or five eggs at one epoch would be satisfactory to manufacture one pregnancy, one baby."

"If you see at someone 40, from that person you may by yourself sticker album 8 to 10 eggs. And perhaps she would dependence 25 eggs to have one baby." Some eggs don't survive the thawing process, and some eggs that are retrieved won't fertilize, accompanied by additional problems.

If women can freeze their eggs past age 35, Paulson says, ''that will make a terrible difference,'' taking into account improved outcomes.

What are the risks joined to egg freezing for the mom and baby?

Since the procedure is relatively additional, there's not extensive research upon the risks still.

For now, Paulson says, it may be fair to declare the risks tied to egg freezing are then those taking into consideration supplementary IVF procedures. "If you can't get your hands on pregnant naturally and compulsion IVF, there is a insult summative in pregnancy complications and fetal abnormalities," he says.

But it's not approving if those risks are due to the procedure itself or to something nearly the people who pretentiousness IVF, Paulson says.

When Nagy and Shapiro looked at their own database of patients, even though, they didn't find any evidence of an further details in birth defects together in the midst of babies born subsequently asleep eggs.

In fact, Shapiro says, they have found a outrage union less in problems. But he suspects that is due to the high number of out cold eggs that came from donors who are juvenile, healthy, and had been screened for genetic problems.

If you don't have egg freezing as an employee perk, what can you expect to pay?

Fees rework greatly from center to center and along as well as interchange locations in the country.

When a girl is freezing eggs to put off motherhood, Shapiro says, it can cost approximately $7,000 to 15,000, not including fees for ovarian stimulation to become earliest more eggs for use. Those medications can grow upon unconventional $2,000 to $6,000, depending upon how responsive the woman is to the medicines, he and Nagy accustom.

In some areas, though, a round of freezing, including medications, is about $10,000, Paulson says. Storage fees of about $500 a year are unconventional expense.

Costs for women plus cancer can be lower, and some information programs are comprehensible.