Women now are educated to freeze their eggs when they are still viable, so if they wish to fall pregnant at a later age and have poor egg quality, they will have the frozen eggs as a backup plan. With this method you can conceive at the age of 40, for example, with your eggs collected from the age 30-year and you will have a higher pregnancy chance with the higher quality of a 30-year-old egg.
Egg collection is not only for women who want to postpone gestational age, but also for women who have reduced or decreased egg capacity for medical reasons.
Who can freeze their eggs?
- Women who are not considering pregnancy and plan to fall pregnant at an later age;
- Women who are looking to undergo chemotherapy or abdominal radiotherapy due to any cancer in the body
- Women with low egg reserve;
- Women with early menopause story in their family;
- Women who are known to have an early menopausal age due to genetic anomalies can plan their life more freely by choosing the egg freezing method.
What should be done before Egg Freezing?
It is necessary to perform a complete gynaecological examination and ultrasound before the treatment period. In addition, some hormone tests (AMH to measure your reserve, TSH for thyroid, Prolactin hormone, blood count, etc.) and Sexual transmitted tests are required. If there is a problem with these, it should be corrected first and then treatment planning should begin. Your doctor may recommend some additional vitamins also.
Ovarian Stimulation
Based on your ultrasound and examination findings, your doctor will plan an appropriate dose and medication protocol for you. There are two types of stimulation protocols, Long and Short, the preferred protocol is generally the Short protocol (Antaggonist) as stimulation will begin on day two or three of the menstrual cycle and will last between 11-13 days. Ultrasounds and blood tests will be needed at certain stages of the stimulation, so the female will be closely monitored to check follicle development. The hormone stimulation is a series of hormone daily subcutaneous injections (GnRH) and these encourage the eggs in your body to grow but the dose of the medication is also dependent on factors such as how may potential antral follicles are present, height and weight.
Once the Egg collection has been carried out, the embryologist will monitor each egg under a microscope and will determine which eggs are mature to be frozen.
Egg collection is a painless operation and with the help of anaesthetic drugs applied to the vascular system (called sedation) and it is a very short operation requiring 10-15 minutes. As with any medical practice where anaesthesia is applied, no food or water must be consumed 6 hours prior to the procedure.
You may be discharged after 2 hours of follow-up after egg collection and all is well.
Especially in patients with low egg reserve, the pooling system can be applied to collect more than one egg in different months. This way your frozen egg count will increase as will your chances of a viable pregnancy.
