What is egg vitrification and who can benefit from it?

28-Nov-2011

What Is Egg Vitrification (Oocyte Vitrification)?

Egg Vitrification is a method of freezing a woman’s eggs during the process of egg cryopreservation. Egg cryopreservation (oocyte cryopreservation) is the technology employed to extract, freeze and store a woman’s eggs. Egg cryopreservation offers a way to preserve or extend fertility and is used by women for a range of different reasons.

Who Could Benefit From Egg Vitrification (Oocyte Vitrification)?

Egg vitrification is the newer technique which can be used to freeze women’s eggs, which can be availed of by women who have certain serious health issues as well as women who are making pragmatic life choices. For example if a woman has been diagnosed with cancer, she may wish to use egg vitrification as her treatment could damage her eggs. Therefore she can have the chance to preserve her fertility before undergoing treatment.

There are other women who may have a family history of early menopause, in which case it could make sense to choose egg vitrification. As life has changed so much for a number of decades now, in many societies it is expected that women should have a career and at some stage juggle motherhood with this, or perhaps later in life leave her career.

Other social changes added to this can often mean that couples don’t get married or commit to each other as early as they once did, so again this means that pregnancy is being postponed until later in life. So for many different personal reasons, women, as well as couples, who wish topreserve fertility can consider egg vitrification as a good option. Be it that they feel too young, have careers which need more time or maybe haven’t met the right person, be in a gay relationship, these are viable reasons to consider egg vitrification.

It Is Still Early Days For Egg Vitrification (Oocyte Vitrification)

Egg vitrification is currently in its early days in terms of research studies, yet the concept is that the eggs can be frozen in a way that does not cause ice crystals to form. A woman’s eggs contain quite a bit of water so this means that the method previously used to freeze eggs (more slowly) had a higher risk of ice crystals forming. These can destroy the structure of the cell.

What happens with egg vitrification is that the temperature gets reduced extremely quickly, at about 23,000 degrees per minute and this means that the egg changes from a liquid state into a vitreous state. However even though it is early days, clinics are reporting very good results. Also a study which involved 600 women, which compared the on-going pregnancy rate in women who had received vitrified oocytes to women who had fresh oocytes, showed that those received vitrified oocytes was 43.7% as opposed to 41.7% in the fresh oocyte group.

In 2009 the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in an opinion that they issued concluded that the science of oocyte cryopreservation holds “great promise for applications in oocyte donation and fertility preservation.” Egg vitrification appears to add to this promise.