This is one of a series of news items from abstracts of studies presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine as complied by Dr. David Meldrum, Scientific Director of Reproductive Partners. We appreciate the enormous amount of work it takes to compile and comment on these abstracts.
As egg freezing becomes more widely available, the most obvious question is whether frozen eggs are as good as fresh in creating IVF pregnanciies.
When live birth rates per egg retrieved were analyzed for both frozen eggs and for fresh IVF, they were similar (4.5 and 5.1%), indicating that egg freezing is not less efficient. Some have have even advocated egg rather than embryo cryopreservation for their multiple freeze-all cycles in poor responders in order to do one ICSI,, and for freeze-all for high responders to avoid the problem of excess embryos and to increase the likelihood of excess eggs being donated. This abstract and the finding that the pregnancy rate with donated eggs is equal whether fresh or vitrified both support their approach.
This study is reassuring for women freezing their eggs for fertility preservation as well as potential recipients of egg donation who may be planning to access frozen egg banks because of convenience and lower cost.