Kashish Sharma
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Written By: Kashish Sharma | Updated : January 5, 2023 12:09 PM IST
The process of egg freezing has documented some successes and can work out well in some cases.
Recently, an international media outlet shared a story of a woman from London who decided amidst the pandemic that she wanted to preserve the quality of her eggs. She wanted to freeze her eggs. The leading news outlet shared how in the UK the trend has been seeing an upward trajectory since the pandemic. Fertility declines throughout the reproductive cycle of a woman and the fall is rapid after 35 years of age. While many personal, professional and environmental challenges have made childbearing far more complex than it was before, can egg-freezing emerge as a new dawn for motherhood? This question might take years to receive an answer but we can start today by talking about it.
Egg freezing or oocyte cryopreservation is a way of conserving potential eggs that might potentially lead to live births in the future. With age, the quality of eggs declines, and there might be an increasing chance of eggs having genetic abnormalities. Hence, many women in the west are opting for this method to preserve their most fertile eggs for the future.
The process of egg-freezing can be exhaustive for some as it involves many steps. Firstly, if you agree to go for the process, your doctor might perform a comprehensive assessment of your health and specifically of your fertility. You might be asked to go for many blood and hormone tests. Following this, you might be kept on hormonal therapy. It will include injections of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) which encourages the ovaries to produce eggs. After this, you might be given injections to trigger ovulation.
All the steps including egg development and ovulation will be closely monitored by your doctor through regular ultrasound screening. This follows a retrieval procedure which is invasive and follows which the eggs are immediately put to freeze. The mature eggs are frozen in liquid nitrogen at extremely low temperatures that will temporarily pause the life activity in the cell until the time the mother is ready to use them. Women opting for this method will have to take IVF (in vitro fertilization) to get the fertilized egg implanted into their uterus. The younger the mother is, the more would be the rate of success. However, this might not always stand true as the process depends on uterine health, the age of the mother, and her overall health and sperm quality.
The process of egg freezing has documented some successes and can work out well in some cases. However, the process depends on many factors. These factors might equally affect the success rates of egg freezing as much as they affect natural conception. While egg freezing is more common in western clinics, it is still a foreign concept in our country where only a few women have gone for it. Awareness and cost are two important factors that will determine its growth in the country. While the process has its lows and highs, it can help women who might be in conflicting roles and might wish to preserve their fertility with age. Here are a few ways in which the technique might turn out to be beneficial-
