Hey New York, It’s Getting Cold Again
So, Let’s Talk About Freezing Your Eggswith Dr. Jesse Hade
In New York City we’re expecting some of the coldest weather of the season this week and it’s only going to get worse as December 2021 unfolds.
However, when it comes to medicine - specifically fertility preservation, cold or cryopreservation can be an important tool to maximize the quality and quantity of your eggs for a future time. Fertility preservation is an especially critical tool for patients with a recent cancer diagnosis and need to save their fertility before chemotherapy starts.
We had the chance to talk with Dr. Jesse Hade from Generation Next Fertility here in New York City about egg freezing and how cryopreservation has made egg and sperm freezing more successful in just the last 10-years.
In short, why do you recommend egg freezing to your patients?
Dr. Hade: Peace of mind. Many patients who come to talk to me about egg freezing have a lot going on in their personal and professional lives. By freezing their eggs for tomorrow and at the youngest age possible, it’s one less thing they have to worry about today.
More and more patients understand that their natural fertility doesn’t last forever. For most women, by the time they’re in their late 30’s, both egg quantity and quality have declined substantially making getting or staying pregnant harder. Using your 35-year-old eggs in your 40-year-old body can an important pathway to success for many patients.
Without fertility preservation, most patients will have fewer eggs to work with, and their embryos are likely to be of lower quality. Rates of aneuploidy or where the embryos have a chromosomal imbalance and less likely to be a healthy pregnancy, are higher for patients over 40 years old.
How does the fertility preservation process work?
Dr. Hade: It’s just a few steps, actually. First, we’ll do some testing to confirm ovarian reserve – essentially confirm what are your natural fertility levels before we do anything. Next, we will do a stimulation cycle with injectable medications to get as many eggs as possible. Injections last between 7-10 days. Finally, the patient will come in for an egg retrieval in our office. From there, eggs are cryopreserved using a process called vitrification for use in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, or more.
How long can eggs be stored?
Dr. Hade: If they are kept in a well-controlled storage environment, frozen eggs as well as sperm and embryos can be stored indefinitely. I’ve had patients come back a few years after freezing. Survival rates or thaw rates exceed 90% if they have been stored using vitrification. Not every center routinely uses vitrification so best to ask.
