Fertility preservation via egg freezing allows women to store their eggs at a younger age for future use and is now an important modality of modern treatment. Whether eggs are being cryo-preserved as a medical emergency in the setting of a newly-diagnosed cancer or for personal reasons, the technology holds great promise for women at their peak reproductive age.
Just couple of years before, effective and reliable egg freezing for fertility preservation was an elusion. But recent advancements in reproductive science have been changing hopes into realities in a consistent manner for last few years.
To date, there have been over 1000 births worldwide via egg freezing since first baby in 1986. To put egg freezing into context, it is interesting to consider that human sperm has been successfully frozen since 1950s and the first successful pregnancy generated using frozen embryo in Monash IVF was in 1984.
Despite this success, advances in the field of egg cryopreservation were slow, marred by the decreased fertilisation rates due to zona hardening, temperature sensitive meiotic spindle and increased aneuploidy.
Medical indications
-Cancer patients before going under potentially sterilising therapy such as gonadotoxic medications
-Surgical removal of ovaries
-Genetic diseases associated with premature ovarian failure (POF), for an example mosaic Turner's syndrome
-Extensive endometriosis involving ovaries such as chocolate cysts
IVF indications
-Potential preservation of fertility in the absence of current male partner
-Lack of sperm at egg pick up in the setting of severe male infertility
-Failed testicular sperm extraction
Elective indications
-Women under the pressure of having to choose between a career and a family
-Pursuing advanced degrees and don't know when will have children
-Not having found the right person yet
Ethical, moral and religious point of view
In routine IVF, disposal of excess frozen embryos create a difficult religious, moral and ethical issue when embryo is considered as potential future baby. The ability to freeze unfertilised eggs offers a positive solution for many people.
Success rates and safety
It has been published in different medical journals that few egg freezing centres in the USA, UK, Italy and Australia have reached live birth rate per embryo transfer at 67% with the vitrification method. However, most of the publications have shown that the age of the women is below 35.
Among 1000 births worldwide, the rate of birth defects and chromosomal defects have been no higher than that of which we see in the general population. Additionally, genetic screening of embryos is available if required.
Worldwide hope for cancer women
Around the world, many thousands of women of childbearing age are diagnosed with cancer each year. Fertility preservation is a significant concern for young women when making decisions about their cancer treatment.
Until now fertilised embryos preservation was the only option. But for women without partners, embryo freezing is not possible for religious, moral and ethical grounds. Another option is to have ovarian tissue frozen and then re-implanted in the body on suitable time. But there are fears of reintroducing cancer to the body.
Recent advancement in egg freezing gives hope to cancer survivors who now have the chance to continue their family line by harvesting eggs before chemo and radiotherapy. So, egg freezing and fertility preservation of women is no longer a myth to date. Even though human egg freezing has not yet reached such consistency level like embryo or sperm freezing, but it is an insurance policy against cancer survivors and age-related infertility worldwide.
There is no doubt that with more standard techniques in upcoming years, egg freezing will be revolutionary not just in its technology, but in the freedom it can offer allowing women to postpone childbearing and in carrying biogenic child in cancer survivor women.

The writer is a Clinical Embryologist, Monash IVF, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]