Over a quarter of women who chose to freeze their eggs in their 30s for non-medical reasons, returned to the clinic for fertility treatment.
Of a cohort of 843 mostly single women who chose to freeze their eggs at a mean age of 36; 37 women, or four percent, had a baby using those eggs. Other women either did not return for fertility treatment, underwent intrauterine insemination, used fresh eggs collected at a later date for IVF treatment, or did not have a baby following IVF treatment with their frozen eggs. The research from the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussels, Belgium was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology 39th Annual Meeting 2023.
Dr Ezgi Darici, a clinical fellow at the Centre for Reproductive Medicine who presented the data said: 'Increasing numbers of women are choosing to freeze their eggs in the hope that it will enable them to have children later in life. However, there is a lack of evidence on how effective this strategy is. To our knowledge, this is one of the first and largest reports of reproductive outcomes in women who had elective oocyte cryopreservation at a European fertility centre.'
The women who returned for treatment had an average age of 40 and the majority were in relationships. Researchers showed that of the women who did return for treatment, 48 percent chose to use their frozen eggs, and 40 percent of these women went on to have a baby.
Nearly a third of the women who returned for fertility treatment, or eight percent of the total cohort, had fertility treatments using fresh eggs. The average age of the women using frozen eggs was 42, while the average age of women using fresh eggs was 39.
Data were not reported on how many women who had frozen their eggs conceived naturally, and the study has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Dr Kylie Baldwin, senior lecturer at the Centre for Reproduction Research, De Montfort University, Leicester, who was not involved in the research said: 'Little is currently known about the reproductive intentions and actions of previous users of social egg freezing, this small but important study indicates that many of these women do not return to use their eggs to conceive and out of those who do, around 40 percent were successful in achieving a live birth.
'While this study may provide some encouragement for women considering freezing their eggs, women should be advised that the best time to undergo the procedure is before they reach their late 30s or early 40s. When considering the procedure, women must be advised of the likelihood of achieving a live birth based on their age at freezing.'
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.