Egg Freezing
Mature or immature eggs taken from the patient can be frozen and stored. Unfortunately, achieving pregnancy with this method is not very successful. However, recently successful results have been reported with the method called vitrification. It can be especially applied to patients who will receive cancer treatment but have sufficient time for ovulation stimulation before treatment, or to women who have not yet found their partner and want to postpone the age of becoming a mother.
Sperm Freezing
The presence of testicular cancer in a man or the fact that the man will undergo radiotherapy or chemotherapy due to tumor treatments in other organs may cause infertility in the man after the treatment. Therefore, sufficient sperm samples can be frozen and stored. Sometimes, when a woman undergoes in vitro fertilization and the man is unable to produce semen due to travel, work or psychological reasons, precautions are taken by freezing the sperm beforehand. Sperm, unlike eggs and embryos, are little affected by the freezing and thawing process. It has almost the same success rate as fresh sperm.
Embryo Cryopreservation
More than the number required for transfer. If many and good quality embryos are obtained, these embryos can be frozen and stored. Some embryos cannot survive during the freezing-thawing process. With this method, the pregnancy rate is almost close to the fresh embryo transfer rate.
Embryo freezing has been used in in vitro fertilization centers for about 20 years and is a proven method. This process is also successfully implemented in our center. Especially in cases with a high number of eggs, freezing and storing an appropriate number of embryos obtained frees the patient from the burden of all the procedures applied up to the stage of freezing in case pregnancy cannot be achieved, and is extremely useful in terms of being easily applicable for wanting a second child if pregnancy is achieved.
Embryo freezing can be applied at every stage of embryo development. The technique is applied to embryos on the first day of fertilization and to embryos on the 5th day, when the morphological differentiation takes place and we call the embryo blastocyst. It primarily gives better results.
To give brief information about the embryo freezing technique, embryos are treated with specially prepared anti-freezing solutions in accordance with their developmental stages and the temperature is averaged in a special computer-controlled device. It is frozen by lowering the temperature to 80°C. Embryos are stored in tanks with an internal environment of -196°C, in specially designated and labeled compartments. Since no biological activity can occur at this temperature, the embryos can be stored until the patient wishes to thaw them without losing their viability. However, as a result of trauma that may occur during the embryo freezing process, loss of viability may occur after thawing in approximately 20% of frozen embryos. The implantation rate (adhesion of the embryo to the uterine wall) of each surviving embryo is reduced by one third compared to freshly transferred embryos. However, this is not a definitive judgment. Advancing technological developments greatly reduce the effect of embryos from the freezing process.
There is technically no harm in keeping frozen embryos as long as the couple decides. Although it is technically stated that the appropriate storage period is 3-5 years, pregnancies reported after transfer of embryos stored for longer periods are an indication that these embryos can last for long periods of time when stored safely. However, in this system, where couples renew the storage contract every year, it can be decided whether the embryos will continue to be stored, thawed and transferred, thawed and destroyed, or thawed and used for medical research. In our country, the embryo storage period has been extended to 5 years in the regulation of the Ministry of Health ART centers.
Freezing records are kept in our clinic with strict security, as in all other medical procedure procedures. Records are kept in computer files that can only be accessed by authorized persons with a password. These files are automatically backed up to 5 separate recording media every day, and two of these records are kept outside the clinic against the danger of fire and computer theft.
Freezing of Testis Biopsy Material
When sperm cells are found in the biopsy material taken from the testicle, the entire testicular tissue can be frozen and stored at -196 degrees.
Ovarian Tissue Freezing
It is a method of preserving the biopsy material taken from the cortex of the ovaries of young women before receiving chemotherapy, in order to have children after the treatment, by storing it at -196 degrees. This method caused excitement in the press and the scientific world. However, unfortunately, no pregnancy has been achieved yet with this method.
Vitrification Method
It is made by cooling the water in the biological environment extremely quickly, without allowing sharp crystals to form. It is the cooling process in which it becomes a glassy solid. The aim is to bring the cell to completely high cooling without intracellular ice crystals. DMSO and ethylene glycol are most commonly used as cryoprotectants.
After the frozen embryos are placed in storage containers and the names and numbers are recorded, the samples are placed directly into liquid nitrogen.
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Nowadays, this method is used more and more frequently because it has a higher success rate than the computerized slow freezing technique and is easily applied to embryos at all stages. This method is used in our IVF Center.
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