A complex medical procedure commonly known as “egg freezing,” which allows younger women to preserve their eggs, or oocytes, for later use in creating babies, has shown acceptable success rates and should no longer be considered experimental, according to a report released Friday.
“Oocyte cryopreservation is an exciting and improving technology,” said Dr. Eric Widra, a reproductive endocrinologist and chair of the influential Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) Practice Committee which issued the report.
“Pregnancy rates and health outcomes of the resulting children are now comparable to those of IVF(in-vitro fertilization) with fresh eggs,” he said.
The report has no binding legal force. But the panel’s recommendation opens the door for insurance companies to cover the costs of a treatment that offers hope for young women with diseases that could make them sterile before they’ve had all the children they plan to have.
It also may reassure doctors – some of whom have been reluctant to recommend the procedure because of a lack of data or concerns about safety.
The treatment can also be used for those who delay starting families for personal or professional reasons, essentially extending the window for women to bear children in their 40s or 50s.
"I guess I feel like I've stopped the biological clock, to some degree,” 40-year-old Jennifer Anderson, a single consultant who had the procedure last year at Shady Grove Fertility Center outside Washington, said in an interview with National Public Radio.
“That this gives me a few more years to find what it is that I'm really looking for," she said.
Fertility rates for healthy women decline sharply after age 35, and reach almost zero by the time they are 45. Cryopreservation allows doctors to extract eggs from healthy, younger women and then store them in a lab until the patient is ready to have children.
