Egg Freezing

Not ready for children yet but concerned about your fertility rate? At our Manchester clinic we offer egg-freezing. It is a procedure where your eggs are frozen and stored, until the times comes when you wish to use them to try to conceive.

There are many reasons why women come to us to freeze their eggs. The most common are:

• Having children later in life: Some women freeze their eggs so they can have children later in life, without worrying that the quality of their eggs has declined due to age.
• Medical treatment: Treatments such as chemotherapy, and for certain medical conditions such as Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), ovarian cysts and severe endometriosis, can adversely affect your fertility. Women choose to freeze their eggs before starting treatment.
• IVF treatment: We also freeze eggs as an emergency procedure for IVF patients, if there’s a problem obtaining a sperm sample. This ensures the eggs can still be used when the sperm sample is ready.

Before you freeze your eggs you will need to see one of our consultants at Manchester Fertility Services, who will go through a full explanation of the process involved, including the risks. You will also be offered an opportunity to discuss the implications of this process with one of our experienced counsellors.

Once you enter a treatment cycle, the first phase of the process to freeze and store your eggs is very similar to the standard IVF cycle.  Your ovaries are stimulated with fertility drugs to produce more eggs than you would naturally.  The development of the eggs is carefully monitored and once the eggs have reached the correct size egg collection takes place under sedation.

Your eggs are then frozen using a new technique called vitrification, and once frozen your eggs would be stored in liquid nitrogen until you wish to try to conceive with them.

When you decide you wish to use your eggs, your eggs are thawed, analysed and fertilised via intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), where a single, best quality and healthy sperm is injected directly into the egg.  The best quality embryo(s) will be selected for transfer.

The chances of pregnancy are influenced by a number of factors. These include your age, the number of eggs removed, how successfully they survive the freeze-thaw process, how many are fertilised and how many quality embryos are available for transfer.