To prevent infertility issues, understand the difference between social and clinical egg freezing.
The older a woman waits to get pregnant, the more obstacles there are in the way of pregnancy, but egg freezing, also known scientifically as oocyte cryopreservation, is an unexplored option for exploring late parenting. Be aware of the distinctions between social and clinical egg freezing.
Nowadays, many women put off having children for a variety of reasons, and as a result, some of them have difficulty conceiving naturally in the future. This is because as women age, their biological clock keeps ticking, which is a sign that time is running out. It is a recognized fact that the longer women wait to start a family, the more obstacles there are to pregnancy. However, thanks to advances in medical technology, women now have the option to freeze their eggs and use them when they are ready to start a family.
Egg production in women is naturally and gradually constrained. Born with a finite number of eggs (1–2 million), which fall to 300k by puberty, 25k by age 30, and 1k by the start of menopause. The social stigma of the ticking biological clock is inevitable because many women are able to delay prospective childbearing by achieving their immediate aspirations of an uninterrupted career.
What Is Freezing Eggs?
Dr. Priti Gupta, Senior Consultant in Fertility and IVF Services, First Step IVF (Centre for Reproductive Medicine), New Delhi, said in an interview with HT Lifestyle that egg freezing, also known as human oocyte cryopreservation, is a method used to retrieve and securely freeze woman’s eggs. By doing this, women can later serve as their own egg donors when spontaneous conception may be more challenging or unlikely. The results in terms of producing healthy offspring are the same whether the eggs are frozen or fresh.
“Egg-freezing has become a practice that acts as a synonym of opportunity for many career-oriented women due to greater awareness and the breakthrough developments in egg-freezing technology over the past several years,” the author continued. With the most recent kind of freezing, known as vitrification, more than 85% of previously frozen eggs now make it through the warming process. When eggs are frozen before age 35, pregnancy rates are at their highest. Therefore, freezing enough eggs to boost reproductive flexibility and improve chances of getting pregnant later on—ideally 20 to 30—while they are still in top condition is an option.
Oocyte cryopreservation, also known as egg freezing, is a procedure that preserves a woman’s reproductive potential by extracting, freezing, and storing her egg oocytes. Dr. N Sapna Lulla, Lead Consultant – Obstetrics and Gynecology at Aster CMI Hospital in Bangalore, further explained this underutilized approach, saying, “Egg freezing or oocyte cryopreservation is a process in which a woman’s egg Egg freezing may allow women to stretch their biological clocks, investigate ways to prolong their reproductive years, and preserve younger, healthier eggs while giving them the freedom to choose when and how they want to have children.
The woman explained the processes of the procedure, saying, “Before the egg freezing process, the woman is clinically assessed and analyzed with blood hormones. A thorough medical history is taken by the doctor, with an emphasis on fertility. As part of the therapy, a woman gets hormone injections that encourage her ovaries to generate lots of eggs. Serial ultrasounds are used to monitor them along with egg retrieval. All procedures are carried out while sedated. In a technical sense, receiving an egg back is identical to getting blood taken for a test. Just the vaginal wall is punctured by the needle, which then enters the ovary to aspirate the fluid that contains the egg. There is a 2 to 12% probability that a single frozen egg will result in a live delivery.
Therefore, freezing a dozen eggs is advised in order to increase success. However, the age of the lady and the partner’s sperm quality are key factors in success.
Comparing social and medical egg freezing:
Women can freeze eggs for social or clinical purposes, also known as Social Egg Freezing and Clinical Egg Freezing, according to Dr. Priti Gupta, who distinguished between the two terms. When we refer to “Social Egg Freezing,” we are implying that a woman can store her eggs for non-medical reasons, taking into account her job advancement, academic pursuits, inability to locate the ideal mate, and lack of emotional and financial readiness. Contrarily, when we use the term “clinical egg freezing,” we mean women who are dealing with conditions like cancer that call for chemotherapy or radiation treatment, women who have poor ovarian reserves, women who have a family history of early menopause, etc.
