SOCIAL EGG FREEZING

Dr. Kanchan Murarka
Senior Infertility Specialist & IVF Consultant

---

Fertility preservation via egg freezing was originally offered to women for oncology or medical reasons, but in today’s era there is a big shift, and “Social Egg Freezing” is available to every woman who is concerned about her fertility.

Social egg freezing is also known as “Planned Oocyte Preservation”. It is the process by which any woman of childbearing age can freeze her eggs for the purpose of giving birth to a child at a later date. So, here we are using medical technology to respond to a non-medical problem i.e. natural aging. The reproductive age of a woman is limited by her ‘biological clock’. With increasing age, there is a gradual decline in her fertility. A woman is most fertile from 20 to 30 years of age and thereafter it decreases gradually and faster after 35 years. This is because the quantity and quality of women’s eggs diminish with age.

The role of women in today’s world has changed significantly and for the better. More and more women are now pursuing higher education and have better work opportunities. So, by the time the woman completes her education, gets a suitable job, gets married, and starts planning a pregnancy the egg reserve is sometimes already gone. This can lead to difficulty in conceiving.

Planned oocyte preservation comes as a boon for these groups of women who prefer to delay motherhood. Egg freezing technology provides an opportunity to extend their fertility by freezing and storing unfertilized eggs. Many workplaces too have started to weigh in on this technology and in a bid to attract female talent, companies like Uber, Facebook, and Apple offer female employees the option to freeze their eggs. Even Indian companies like ‘Accenture India’ and ‘We work India’ are offering medical cover to employees for egg freezing.

Planned oocyte preservation is done by the process of IVF. Medicines are given for hormone ovarian stimulation and once the eggs are ready, transvaginal retrieval of eggs is done. These eggs are then cryopreserved at -196^oC. Whenever a pregnancy is desired, the frozen eggs are thawed and fertilized with sperm via a process called Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) and implanted into the uterus. Research suggests that a single pregnancy may be achieved on an average from about 10-15 frozen eggs.

To Know more about Egg Freezing Process at Institute of Human Reproduction (IHR), Click Here

Since social egg freezing is safe, it is widely accepted and more and more women are coming forward for their fertility preservation. But before going ahead with the process, proper counseling of the concerned woman should be done, where all aspects of the process are discussed with her.