Oocyte Cryopreservation Offers Option For Delayed Pregnancy

Most women today are deciding to put-off having a child. Among the reasons for this include women that are are focused on a career, women who have are returned to school/college, or because they simply haven’t met the right person with which to start a family. For women who fit into this group, egg freezing, also referred to as oocyte cryopreservation, is a revolutionary technology and one that allows women the ability to make life choices.

Another reason egg freezing is such a revolutionary technology, is the fact that oocyte cryopreservation allows for women diagnosed with cancer to undergo chemotherapy treatments, while retaining the option to have children later. In most cases, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments lead to infertility. While options vary depending on age, type of cancer and cancer-treatment plan, egg freezing can provide these women the opportunity to preserve their fertility.

Egg Donation Provides Options for Pregnancy

Egg donation allows women to become pregnant even when they lack eggs of their own, or their eggs are of poor quality. The technique is most commonly used in women who are unsuccessful after undergoing multiple cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF), those with premature ovarian failure or elevated FSH levels, and those over the age of forty-three. The combination of young eggs and optimal preparation of both donor and recipient makes egg donation a very successful fertility procedure.

The process of egg donation requires that the components of a single IVF cycle be divided between the donor and the recipient. The donor undergoes the initial steps of IVF, including ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval, and the recipient undergoes the embryo transfer.

Both women's cycles must be synchronized using birth control pills. When the cycle begins, the donor is administered the medications required for egg follicle development, while the recipient takes a combination of estrogen and progesterone to prepare the uterine lining for implantation. Once the donor's eggs are mature, they are retrieved and fertilized in the laboratory.

Typically the embryo transfer is scheduled 3 or 5 days later. The recipient continues to take estrogen and progesterone through the end of the first trimester to mimic the hormones produced by the ovary in natural conception. At the end of the first trimester (twelve weeks gestational age, or approximately ten weeks after embryo transfer), when the placenta is producing enough hormones. Estrogen and progesterone supplementation is stopped.