Froze your eggs - save your career!
How not to loose the possibility to become a mother for women, who are ill with cancer, single or busy with their career.
Deferred maternity (postponed motherhood, social freezing, oocytes vitrification) – is innovative technology of saving eggs, which gives woman an opportunity to postpone the solving of the issue of the childbirth.
Reproductive potential of a woman, given by the nature is 350 000 eggs, from which no more than 300-400 are mature. Herewith the period of oocytes (eggs) high quality at an average falls at age from 17 to 27 years old. Than from 28 to 38 years all not all oocytes, which release during the ovulation, are of a high quality, and there is no fact that they all will prove to be viable.
It should be taken into account that with aging female eggs undergo significant changes at the genetic level. Their quality inevitably decreases (from the age of 35) and the percent of abnormal and incapable of further development embryos is growing rapidly. At the age of 40 – their number is 80%, and at the age of 43 – already 95%. It seems that woman at the age of 43-44 years old will have only 1 genetically complete embryo from 5. The womb can take the pregnancy, but the quality of egg is poor (the probability of chromosomal pathologies development increases to 70% - Down, Patau or Edwards syndromes)…
- Why we take care of our future by making a career, saving money for pension, securing ourselves with accommodation, but forget about the most valuable – the possibility to deliver a child.
- Why we continue to perceive cancer and further chemotherapy as a sentence for future motherhood?
- Why we growing old every day but do not secure the decrease the risk of possible occurrence of malformation of our future children?
- However, we can save the viable eggs today to deliver a child “tomorrow” with the help of so-called “deferred maternity” or “social freezing”.
Ways to save the ability to fertilize for women:
- Medical – usage of GnRH agonists along with the chemotherapy.
- Surgical – ovariopexy before the appointment of radiation therapy to the pelvic region.
- Cryopreservation – oocytes vitrification, oocytes cryopreservation, oocytes maturation in-vitro.
If to consider this process in allegoric way, the saving of own biomaterial is nothing else but insurance for the future. We buy the insurance for a new car, aren’t we? Nevertheless, it does not mean that the driver loses the control immediately and violates road rules creating one car accident for another. The same situation happens in case of oocytes vitrification. If woman is not ready to become a mother in certain period or she has just delivered her first child and now wants to postpone the delivery of the second, she has the full rights to delay these plans for the future. She will be able to perform her mother’s role safely when all her social, financial and career plans are achieved. In case of the age still will interfere her becoming a mother her own oocytes will always come to help.
The possibility temporarily postpone family plans without any harm for the health of future offspring appeared due to innovative method of vitrification – ultrafast freezing of eggs, sperm, embryos at extremely low temperature. It makes the liquid inside of cells not to crystalize, but turns into an amorphous state. This provides integrity and viability of cells after thawing. The survival rate of cells is very high – more than 96% and the frequency of getting a pregnancy is the same as a frequency of getting pregnancy using fresh cells.
The procedure of oocyte cryopreservation is recommended in such cases:
- Woman at the age of 30-35 years old, who does not plan to become a mother in close period of time because of personal reasons (excessive employment, absence of a partner or suitable donor).
- Problem in saving the eggs fertility (ability to fertilize) with the presence of cases close relatives had an early menopause.
- As part of complex procedures when conducting an in-vitro fertilization (IVF). For example, one part of eggs patients want to fertilize and another the want to freeze and put in storage.
- Gynecological and oncological diseases, which require immediate treating with the possibility of further disturbance of reproductive functions of an organism (chemotherapy, radiotherapy, ovarian removal etc.).
In the latter case, the possibility of freezing healthy egg gives to the patient a confidence that after the end of treating she can start planning the pregnancy again.
The program consists of 2 stages:
at the first stage patient undergoes medical screening and consultation, the absence of contraindications for assisted reproductive technologies is determining (there is not really contraindications for oocytes vitrification). At the first stage stimulation of ovulation and the procedure of oocytes retrieval is conducted (estimation of quality of received oocytes and their purification), then the received oocytes are vitrified (frozen) and put in storage.
second stage comes up when the patients is ready to use cryopreserved oocytes. This stage includes preparing the patient to the embryo transfer in a natural cycle or with the usage of hormonal therapy (eggs thawing, fertilization, cultivation and transferring of embryos to womb cavity).
According to multicenter studies conducted in Europe, deferred maternity is the most financially advantageous in comparison to expenses on IVF programs with fresh eggs in the older reproductive age or IVF with donor eggs.
Therefore, a kind of "Insurance" in the form conservation of own eggs has a series of positive aspects:
- When vitrifying oocytes patient provides herself with reliable, effective and secure variant of saving the reproductive material for the future.
- She is free from psychological and emotional pressure of necessity to realize her motherhood plans and has an opportunity to plan her life by means of both career and family.
- She maximally profitably uses and invests her money.
- She can plan the treating without taking into account the fact of threat of maternity loss.
Frozen eggs can store unlimited time in cryobank. There is a case of successful pregnancy with frozen eggs after 16 years storage.
The main thing is to choose the clinic with own cryobank, laboratory, successful history of conducting a social freezing and further fertilization, proven results of using an auxiliary reproductive technologies and with professionals, who conduct all the procedures in accordance to European protocols and has necessary experience and qualification.