Egg Freezing (Oocyte Cryopreservation)

Top 7 Reasons To Freeze Your eggs

A recent study identified the main reasons that women gave for freezing their eggs. The list below is not surprising. It is also not surprising that many women have described that freezing their eggs gave them a feeling of relief from the phenomenal pressures of having a baby today.

Common Reasons for Freezing Your Eggs:

  1. You are single or just ended a long relationship.
  2. You are a professional in a phase of your career where having a baby would not be ideal.
  3. Having a baby is too much of a commitment right now.
  4. You are not ready to have a baby for financial reasons.
  5. You are not sure you ever want to have a baby, but want to keep you options open.
  6. You are in Graduate School and are not ready to have a baby.
  7. You cannot have a baby today for health reasons.

Although all women are well aware that fertility declines with age, a day does not go by without some article in the media about aging and fertility. While the facts may be true, this continuous flow of sensationalistic articles puts an exaggerated pressure on women. Still, many women and families have found numerous benefits to freezing their eggs.


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How Much Does Egg Freezing Cost?

For many women cost is the major obstacle to access egg cryopreservation. We have heard of many women paying up to 20 thousand dollars in order to freeze their eggs. Many centers advertise a certain price, but then extra costs are added to the process and the price ends up being inflated.

We have chosen to make egg freezing affordable. The maximum price you will pay for the medical costs of egg freezing will be 7900 dollars. Additionally, 1 year of storage for your eggs is included in this package.

The only additional cost involves fertility drugs. We have researched the most affordable formula and the maximum amount that you will spend for medication will be $2,000 or less.

Additionally we have created 2 cycle packages for women who, because of their age or ovarian reserve have to perform more than 1 round of oocyte freezing: 2 cycles would be 13,000 dollars.

*If you have health insurance, we may bill your insurance for certain services such as ultrasounds or blood work.

What is the best age to freeze your eggs?

Under ideal circumstances the best age to freeze your eggs would be before the age of 35. Under Ideal circumstances, being younger than 30 would give you an even better chance. But life's circumstances are seldom ideal.

The majority of women we see cannot choose when to freeze their eggs as life presents us with circumstances that we did not plan: end of a relationship, job problems, school problems, financial problems.

So how many eggs will I need?

The older you are, the more eggs you will need. The success of pregnancy using cryopreserved oocytes is related to one major factor: the number of genetically normal oocytes that were frozen. As a woman ages, her eggs have a tendency to degenerate and become genetically abnormal. Because we cannot determine if your eggs are normal when we freeze them, we must base our recommendation solely on your age and number of eggs.

Egg Freezing

The reality is that as a woman gets older she will produce less eggs, and therefore will have to freeze more eggs in order to have a realistic chance of success later.

This is why we have created our multi-cycle packages for women who do not produce many eggs because of age or because of reduced response to the medication.

We have 20 years of experience in egg freezing

Almost no doctor in the United States can claim such long experience in oocyte freezing. Most people are not aware that the technology of oocyte freezing was first developed in Italy. The reason for this is that the Catholic Church was opposing freezing of embryos. Therefore, the doctors were forced to develop a technique for egg freezing because many patients who had multiple eggs produced through IVF would otherwise be forced to discard them.

One of the first series of babies from egg freezing in the world

At the time Dr. Vidali was conducting research at Columbia University. Around 1995 Dr. Vidali reached out to the top team conducting research on egg freezing in Rome and developed an early protocol. Finally in 1998 Along with Dr. Antinori in Rome Dr. Vidali presented one of the earliest series of births from oocyte cryopreservation in the world. This data was initially presented at the European Society For Reproductive Medicine as well as at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine meeting.

Back in 1998 very few doctors in the United States were not interested in oocyte freezing because the technology was still not optimal. But Dr. Vidali carried on with his work. Initially women reached out to Dr. Vidali because they had to freeze their eggs because they were about to start chemotherapy. Dr. Vidali was one of the first doctors to offer fertility preservation for cancer patients through "Fertile Hope", now part of the Livestrong organization.

As the years went by, the technology for egg freezing has seen amazing improvement. Laboratories have developed a new approach to egg cryopreservation called "vitrification". This approach has increased dramatically the success rate of egg freezing. Today Egg freezing is not regarded ax experimental anymore and has very good success rates.

Dr. Vidali has been in the field of egg freezing since its inception

Many physicians and fertility centers are now involved in Egg Cryopreservations, but very few have been involved in this work since its inception.

References

Vidali, A., et al. "Oocyte cryopreservation is a viable alternative option for patients who refuse embryo freezing." FERTILITY AND STERILITY-INTERNATIONAL EDITION- 70 (1998): P-041.

Antinori, S., Dani, G., Selman, H. A., Vidali, A., Antinori, M., Cerusico, C., & Versaci, C. (1998, June). Pregnancies after sperm injection into cryopreserved human oocytes. In Human Reproduction (Vol. 13, pp. 157-158). GREAT CLARENDON ST, OXFORD OX2 6DP, ENGLAND: OXFORD UNIV PRESS.