Freezing : Oocyte, Sperm, Embryos

The freezing process is used within fertility treatments to ensure that samples can be used successfully at a later date. Freezing oocyte, sperm, and embryos can preserve the samples, allowing people to use them later in family planning.
Freezing oocyte involves a female patient having her eggs collected and frozen, while sperm freezing refers to the same process for men and semen samples.

However, patients can also go through the IVF treatment and have their egg/sperm fertilized into a healthy embryo before the freezing process too. This ensures that, when they reach a point in the future in which they would like to conceive, they have the healthiest possible embryo available, no matter their age.

Oocyte Freezing:
This is to take the oocytes from the ovaries and then freeze them. This process will not damage the cells. The oocytes can be stored for many years. If the patient would like to be pregnant, the frozen oocytes will be mixed with sperm and inserted into the uterus. In addition, the oocyte freezing for future use has medical reasons or it is to increase the chances of getting pregnant at an appropriate time because as women get older, the number of oocytes and the quality is decreasing and consequently leading to infertility or at risk of having abnormal chromosome children. This increases the chance of miscarriage. Therefore, if the oocytes are frozen in an appropriate age, the oocytes are in a good quality and in the right amount. This helps increase the chances of having a normal child when the parents are ready.

The freezing of a patient’s eggs is a method used in order to preserve fertility. This is often done so that she can conceive a child at a later time. The process involves a female patient having her eggs collected by a specialist, before they are frozen and then thawed in the future whenever they are needed for fertility treatment. The natural chances of conceiving a child decrease when a woman reaches a certain age and her egg count may also drop. Freezing eggs at an earlier date ensures that those used in fertility treatments are of the highest quality possible, thus increasing the chances of successfully conceiving.

Sperm Freezing:
The sperms are frozen and stored in a liquid nitrogen tank. They can be stored for over 10 years. This is a service for the male who wish to be sterilized but at the same time would like to keep some sperms. In case of wishing to have a child in the future or need to be treated for a certain diseases that affect the reproductive system, such as cancer treatment by radiation, chemotherapy, etc., or some people are unable to collect sperm on the day of injection or to collect oocytes, so they can come to collect sperm and freeze them in advance.

Embryos Freezing:
Only 1-2 embryos are chosen to be transferred. The remaining embryos are frozen in liquid nitrogen in order to keep it for future use but if wanting to use that embryo, it will be thaw and put back into the uterus again by embryo transfer process.