Egg Freezing

Egg freezing is a relatively new procedure to be offered by clinics. It has evolved to address different issues, one of those is a  growing trend in the population which is women leaving the decision to have a child in later life. As women age so do the eggs in the ovaries. This means that the quality of the eggs deteriorates with age leading to more chromosomal problems. Some women are choosing to freeze their eggs for future use when they are ready to have a family. Others are freezing eggs because they are having chemotherapy and this provides them with their only means of having a family in later life.

The procedure involves cooling the egg very quickly and then freezing it in liquid nitrogen. The difficulty in this procedure is that crystals can form in the freezing process and then through thawing cause damage or destroy the egg. Therefore women are advised to have an IVF cycle to collect a larger number of eggs in the hope that some will survive. So far only a handful of pregnancies have been achieved using this process.