Egg Freezing

Egg (oocyte) freezing is the freezing and storage of mature eggs collected from the ovaries of the woman with very special freezing methods in order to have children in the future.

First of all, the eggs should be collected from the ovaries of women stimulated by hormonal drugs with the help of vaginal ultrasonography and OPU (oocyte pick up = egg collection) needle. Fertilization (microinjection-ICSI/IMSI) and transfer to the uterus are not performed on the collected eggs. Instead, the eggs are treated with chemical solutions (cryoprotectants) that act as antifreeze for a specified period of time and stored for a long time in tanks containing liquid nitrogen at -196oC in carriers specially prepared for the patient.

Although the eggs are practical called vitrification, they are successfully frozen with the freezing method, which requires serious experience and attention. The vitrification process is based on the principle of very fast freezing, and its purpose is to prevent the formation of ice crystals during freezing, which can cause serious damage to the eggs.

When eggs frozen by vitrification are thawed, 90-100% viability rates per egg are obtained. The possibility of a 5-10% decrease in viability rates per thawed egg is one of the most important risks of egg freezing. The eggs, which are thawed one hundred percent alive, are then microinjected with sperm cells obtained from the spouses (ICSI / IMSI) and the embryos obtained are transferred to the woman’s uterus after being grown for a certain period of time in special culture systems in the laboratory.

In recent scientific studies, it has been shown that pregnancy rates close to the pregnancy rates obtained in the fresh trial are obtained by transferring the embryos obtained after thawing from the eggs frozen by the vitrification process to the uterus.

In our center, egg freezing is successfully frozen and stored by vitrification method in cases of medical necessity specified in the relevant regulation of the Ministry of Health, and it can be successfully thawed at any time and used in your IVF treatment.