Social Egg Freezing - Beware! Woman who lost her chance at motherhood despite freezing more than 10 eggs

[Angelica Cheng]

There's a dark side to egg freezing that no one is talking about:
What if your frozen eggs cannot produce a baby?

There's a dark side to egg freezing that no one is talking about

Egg freezing is being sold as a way to control your future. But it's not as powerful as you might think.

www.insider.com

Cruel twist of fate for single woman who froze her eggs in her 30s to ‘free her career’

Last year, with her 45th birthday looming and no sign of Mr. Right, Brigitte Adams excitedly unfroze the 11 eggs and selected a sperm donor

nationalpost.com

When freezing your eggs does not work: What women should know

Women like Angela Herrera are the faces of an often untold story in fertility treatments, when frozen eggs do not result in pregnancies.

www.goodmorningamerica.com

https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/video/embed/58226065

Also beware potential catastrophic failures in low temperature storage of frozen eggs !

Developed countries may have stricter regulations and better quality control of IVF labs compared to developing countries. It may be wiser to freeze your eggs in a country with stricter laws and better quality control of IVF labs. For example compare Australia versus Malaysia or Thailand. In Australia, IVF labs are regularly inspected and audited by the Fertility Society of Australia (FSA) and the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee (RTAC) of Australia. Are IVF labs in Malaysia and Thailand subjected to similar mandatory inspections and audits?

The fact that you can read the news about frozen egg storage failures in the USA confirm that American fertility clinics and IVF labs are subject to strict regulatory oversight and good quality control. Hence, they quickly acknowledged their failures publicly, despite knowing that they will likely be sued for millions of dollars.

Can such transparency and honesty be expected of private fertility clinics and IVF labs in developing countries, where government regulation and oversight are less strict?

Egg freezing industry reeling after two major malfunctions

Egg freezing industry reeling after two major malfunctions

Egg freezing clinics come under scrutiny after two major malfunctions in different parts of the country result in possible loss of thousands of eggs, embryos.

www.nbcnews.com

Embryo and Egg Preservation Failures at Fertility Centers

Embryo and Egg Preservation Failures at Fertility Centers | Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver

Damaged Embryos at Fertility Centers Fertility centers freeze human embryos and eggs for individuals and couples who want children in the future. Unfortunately, recent increases in storage failure have not only damaged the viability of many embryos and eggs, but destroyed some couples’ dreams...

www.rlslawyers.com

Fertility clinic informs hundreds of patients their eggs may have been damaged

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fertility-clinic-informs-hundreds-of-patients-their-eggs-may-be-damaged/2018/03/11/b605ea82-2536-11e8-b79d-f3d931db7f68_story.html

Heartbreak, anxiety, lawsuits: The egg-freezing disaster a year later
The news of two tank failures in 2018 horrified thousands of women and fertility doctors around the country. What — if anything — has changed since then?

Heartbreak, anxiety, lawsuits: The egg-freezing disaster a year later

The news of two tank failures in 2018 horrified thousands of women and fertility doctors around the country. What — if anything — has changed since then?

www.nbcnews.com

Malfunction at egg freezing facility affects hundreds of patients
More than 2,000 eggs and embryos may not be viable after equipment failure.

Malfunction at egg freezing facility affects hundreds of patients

More than 2,000 eggs and embryos may not be viable after equipment failure

www.nbcnews.com

Please also see an excerpt from the following article:

What fertility patients should know about egg freezing

NEW YORK — The failure of systems used to store frozen eggs and embryos at two fertility clinics in the United States has rattled people who count on such clinics to help them realise their hopes of having children.

www.todayonline.com

"Mr Jake Anderson, a founder of Fertility IQ, a website that provides assessments of fertility doctors and clinics, noted that both the Cleveland and San Francisco clinics are “large, reputable, subject to oversight,” and they both quickly acknowledged the failures publicly.

But he said he worried about smaller, private clinics that have no affiliation with a university or hospital and whether some would be less inclined to disclose a problem.

“If this happens in other places that are private, people would take this to the grave and they would never breathe a word of this,” Mr Anderson said. “To think that only the well-run places that have boards and clinical oversight — they’re the only ones having this problem? I believe the opposite.”

 

[Angelica Cheng]

8 things you should consider before freezing your eggs

8 Considerations Before Retrieving or Freezing Your Eggs | Ro

If you're considering egg freezing or egg retrieval, here are 8 important facts to keep in mind about the egg harvesting process and what to expect.

modernfertility.com

It's not an insurance policy

Let's start with a common misconception (no pun intended) — while egg freezing may take some of the stress off of you in terms of knowing your baby-having timeline right now, it's not necessarily a sure-fire way of guaranteeing your forever fertility. Why? Not all the eggs you freeze are going to be viable; think quality as well as quantity in this situation.

How many eggs survive the warming process and can be successfully fertilized depends on how old you were when you froze them (more on this later), and how many are healthy and viable once they come out of storage. Plus, fertility does change with age, so if you freeze your eggs at 25 and use them when you're 35, you will have to contend with the realities of being pregnant at that age because pregnancy complications increase with maternal age.

These aren't arguments for freezing or not freezing your eggs — only you and your doctor can decide if that's the right decision for you — but you should know going in that it's not a matter of freezing and forgetting.

There's no perfect age at which to do it - but there are better ages

According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), an optimal time to freeze your eggs is in your 20s and early 30s, while you (presumably) still have a sturdy ovarian reserve (the number of eggs in your ovaries) and those eggs are healthier when you are younger. Having your hormones tested (with, for example, Modern Fertility), can tell you a lot about the state of your ovarian reserve, and help you decide, with the input of your doctor, if you should consider egg freezing. Egg freezing is not recommended for women over age 38.

It's an intense procedure.

There's a lot that goes into egg freezing, before you even get to the part where the eggs are actually frozen. First, you'll have blood drawn to evaluate your ovarian reserve and screen for infectious diseases. You might also have an ultrasound done to see what's up with your overall ovarian function. Then, you'll take synthetic hormones that stimulate your ovaries to grow a cohort of follicles (the cells that house and protect your eggs), and, at the same time, medicine to prevent you from ovulating before egg retrieval. After an ultrasound has confirmed that your follicles are ready for egg retrieval, you'll give yourself an injection of human chorionic gonadotropin, to help those eggs mature. The retrieval itself happens in a doctor's office, with a transvaginal ultrasound aspiration (yes, you can be anesthetized for this procedure). An ultrasound probe is inserted into your vagina to locate the mature follicles. Then your doctor will insert a long, hollow needle through the vaginal canal to the ovaries, then suction is applied to remove the eggs one-by-one.

You can remove multiple eggs at a time, which is advisable, since it gives you the best chance of getting a healthy egg that can be fertilized. After the eggs are retrieved, they're cooled via a process called vitrification, during which the eggs are flash frozen in liquid nitrogen. Vitrification by liquid nitrogen dramatically increases the survival rate of eggs verses older technology, called “slow freezing.” A 2009 study revealed that eggs frozen via vitrification had a 91% survival rate, versus eggs that are frozen slowly (almost no clinics use slow freezing anymore), which had a 61% survival rate.

There can be side effects

After egg retrieval, you will likely be able to resume your normal activities within a week, but it's vital to note that everyone's body is different. (Write this down and put it somewhere you can see it all the time.) You will likely experience cramping and pain as a result of the retrieval procedure, as well as mood swings, as the result of all those hormones. This is normal, and will abate with time. Avoid making any life-changing decisions immediately after retrieval (you know, other than the one you just made to freeze your eggs). You can also definitely get pregnant during this time, since there could be some eggs hanging around that didn't get retrieved, so steer clear of unprotected sex.

Watch out for symptoms like weight gain and bloating, which can be indications of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, a reaction to the fertility drugs that promote ovulation. The likelihood that you'll get ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome is a lot lower than it used to be, thanks to the establishment of risk factors (polycystic ovary syndrome, for example) and by measuring AMH levels prior to ovarian stimulation, and thus individualizing the hormone protocol when prepping for retrieval.

In general, more longitudinal data is needed to really know the long term effects of the egg freezing process. Because long term hormone replacement is linked to increased breast cancer risk, the intense amount of hormones used in order to stimulate the ovaries of young egg donors (who endure the same process of egg retrieval) could potentially increase their risk of breast cancer, but the reality is that, right now, we simply don't know.

 

[Angelica Cheng]

It can be a good option if you have certain health issues

You might want to consider egg freezing if you have cancer that requires chemotherapy or radiation (which could affect your fertility), or you need to have surgery that could damage your ovaries, or a condition that could damage your ovaries. Learning that you have a family history of early menopause, Turner's Syndrome (a chromosomal abnormality that comes with a risk of premature ovarian failure), or a genetic mutation (like BRCA, which can predispose one to developing breast and ovarian cancer) that leads to the decision to remove your ovaries, might also be good reasons to talk to your doctor about whether or not you're a good candidate for egg freezing.

It's expensive (and navigating insurance can be tricky)

If you are considering egg freezing, it's a good idea to get acquainted with the costs of the procedure, and what your insurance may or may not cover. According to FertilityIQ, the cost of an egg freezing cycle is between $15,000 to $20,000, and don't forget to take into account the cost of eggs storage, which can run you up to $1200 a year, depending on where you go (sometimes the first year of storage is free!). Should you decide to pull those eggs out and use them, the costs of in vitro fertilization vary, but you could be looking at cumulative costs of $40- 60,000. Many clinics offer shared risk options and packages, as well as loans and other financing options.

Coverage for fertility treatments like egg freezing varies, according to what insurance you have. Sixteen states do require insurance companies to supply coverage for infertility treatments, but that doesn't mean coverage is free; you're still responsible for copays if you have private insurance. You also have to qualify for coverage, and that means meeting the criteria for infertility — unable to conceive after one year of timed, unprotected sex, or, if you're over 35, six months of it, or if you've been unable to carry a pregnancy resulting in a live birth after a year. Be vigilant in investigating details if you live in one of these states (and with insurance in general), as there are nuances in each policy.

Should you freeze eggs or embryos?

First, some 101: eggs are unfertilized, and embryos are eggs that have been fertilized with sperm. Freezing yours eggs offers more options — you don't have to know who's going to fertilize those eggs and you can take some time to figure that out. Embryo freezing is useful if you have a cis male partner or a donor and want to get pregnant with that person via IVF. It's possible that you will end up with more embryos than you might want to use, and find yourself confronted with what to do with them: Discard? Donate? Keep them frozen? What happens to those embryos if you end your relationship with the person whose sperm was used? The same issues — how many will survive freezing, how many result in a successful pregnancy —apply, whether you're dealing with embryos or eggs, so ultimately, the answer as to what to do is between you, a partner (if you have one), and a doctor.

Get informed way in advance

It's easy (and understandable) to feel overwhelmed when making decisions about your fertility. Modern Fertility can help you take concrete steps now, so you can get an idea of whether or not egg freezing is something you might need to consider. For example, learning about what your AMH levels (which indicate your ovarian reserve) are now can help predict how successful ovarian stimulation — that's when you take hormones to generate eggs — might be, should you decide to freeze.

Modern Fertility's test can hook you up important information about your hormones, what they're up to, and what you might expect from them in the future (keeping in mind, of course, that there is no absolute predictor when it comes to this stuff) as well as support you with the means to talk about your results with your doctor, and your partner. You're not alone with your questions and concerns. We're here for you.