Cryopreservation is the process of freezing embryos, eggs or sperm for future use.  For the purpose of this article, we are going to discuss Cryopreservation in relation to frozen embryo transfer with IVF.

Cryopreservation of embryos is done for many reasons.  Sometimes embryos are frozen during an IVF cycle because more embryos are produced than needed, so the extra embryos are frozen.  Other times there might be a disruption in an IVF cycle and the embryos are frozen for a future cycle.  If a man or woman is going to go through a cancer treatment, they can start the IVF process and have embryos frozen for future use.

When embryos are frozen, they are frozen between day one to day six after the sperm penetrates the egg.  If the quality of an embryo is poor or they are not dividing well, most clinics will not freeze them.  Depending on how far along they are in the dividing process, when embryos are thawed they will either be transferred to the woman almost immediately after they are thawed or allowed to divide for a few days before transfer takes place.  Either way they are monitored for awhile to evaluate how they are doing and whether or not they were damaged or destroyed during thawing.

Frozen embryo transfer with IVF is different than a regular IVF cycle.  There tends to be less medications involved in a frozen cycle.  Some clinics will even do a natural cycle, meaning they will monitor a woman’s hormone levels and will transfer the embryos when the time is right.  Other clinics opt to do a cycle with medications to regulate a woman’s cycle and better be able to monitor the best time to transfer the embryos.  In either case, you can expect to do progesterone injections after transfer to help with implantation.

Frozen embryo transfer is less expensive than a regular IVF cycle whether or not there are medications involved.  Reason being is there are no medications involved in follicle stimulation and no egg retrieval process.  You are basically paying for the transfer and the few medications that might be involved.

Transfer of frozen embryos is the same as transfer of embryos during a regular IVF cycle.  They are inserted into the uterus using the same methods.  Success rates for frozen cycles are almost equal to IVF without frozen embryos.  The success depends on the quality of the embryos, the reason for your fertility problems and a woman’s age, just as it does with a regular IVF cycle.  When embryos are thawed, they more than likely will not all survive to be transferred during IVF.  For this reason, most doctors opt to thaw one or two extra embryos.

While your frozen embryos are stored, you will probably have to pay a storage fee to the clinic either monthly or annually.  The fee varies from clinic to clinic.  You might also have to pay a one time freezing fee as well.

You should also discuss options for unused embryos.  Ask your clinic if they have an embryo donor program.  When we did IVF, we filled out a detailed form for what we wanted done with unused embryos.  The form even included details about what we would do if we got divorced or if one of us passed away.

The decision to freeze embryos and what to do with unused frozen embryos is a personal decision and an emotional decision.  You should discuss these issues ahead of time before you are faced with having to make the decision.  Talk with you clinic about their frozen embryo success rates.  Ask them as many questions as you need to in order to feel comfortable with doing cryopresesrvation.  For many couples, the process of cryopreservation has opened doors for options that were not available to them less than 25 years ago.  It might be the option that is right for you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 1:43 am and is filed under Fertility. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.