GUIDES
Egg freezing: costs, process, and ovarian reserve testing
Egg freezing can’t guarantee a future pregnancy, but it does give you more options down the road by preserving the quantity and quality of your eggs today. Here’s what you need to know about the process.
What is Egg Freezing?
What is Egg Freezing?
Egg freezing, also known as oocyte cryopreservation, involves stimulating many immature eggs to develop artificially, allowing a doctor to collect them in one go. After retrieval, the eggs are frozen until you're ready to thaw and fertilise them with sperm, and then they are transferred to a functioning uterus.
Egg freezing offers the option to preserve higher quality eggs at a younger age, allowing you to choose to use them at a later stage when you're ready.
The egg freezing process typically involves several steps, including hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries, monitoring of hormone levels and follicle growth, egg retrieval under sedation, and cryopreservation of the eggs using vitrification.
The frozen eggs can be stored for many years until the woman is ready to use them to conceive a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
How much does egg freezing cost?
The cost of Egg Freezing can vary depending on several factors. Here are some important ones to look out for:
How many rounds of egg retrieval you might need
Does you insurance plan include it
How long you plan to store your frozen eggs for
What you plan on doing with the eggs once frozen
On average in India, the entire procedure could cost between ₹1.5 Lakhs and ₹5 Lakhs. Because the number of eggs you have diminishes as you age, you may need more rounds of egg retrieval to get enough viable embryos for procedures like In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF).
Other significant factors impacting costs include your age and when you are able to start the retrieval process. This helps in understanding if you have a normal egg count or a lower than average number of eggs for your age. If you’re considering freezing your eggs, the first step would be to get a fertility test (Arva Health offers a comprehensive Fertility Test) to evaluate your baseline and discuss your results with a fertility specialist.
Cost of egg freezing
Egg-freezing process, step by step
What does the egg-freezing process look like?
There are four major steps you can expect as part of the process:
Consultation: You’ll visit with a reproductive endocrinologist (REI) to undergo a series of tests and exams to come up with your unique plan of action.
Hormone stimulation: You’ll be given birth control to time your cycle, injections to stimulate the growth of your follicles, medication to stop your ovulation before retrieval, and, finally, a trigger shot (the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin, or hCG) to get your eggs ready for retrieval.
Egg retrieval: After administering anaesthesia, your healthcare provider will use a vaginal ultrasound probe with a needle inside to access your follicles (the fluid-filled sacs that house and mature your eggs) — and then the embryologist will go egg hunting. Once they collect as many eggs as they can, you’ll go to the recovery room.
Egg freezing: After retrieval, any fully matured eggs retrieved will be frozen in liquid nitrogen (a procedure called vitrification). Multiple rounds of stimulation and retrieval are sometimes required to get enough eggs to freeze and use for procedures like IVF.
Throughout the process, it is essential to maintain open communication with your healthcare provider to address any concerns or questions you may have. The process can be physically and emotionally demanding, so having a support system in place can be beneficial.
Although you'll be under anesthesia during the procedure, you might experience some cramping, soreness, or aches immediately following the egg retrieval process.
However, most discomfort can be managed with over-the-counter pain relievers.
Freezing your eggs can be an emotionally charged decision. The process involves daily hormone injections and frequent doctor visits, which can lead to emotional fluctuations and stress. It's important to be prepared for these challenges and seek support from healthcare providers, therapists, or support groups.
How do you know if freezing your eggs is right for you?
Deciding to freeze your eggs is a personal choice that depends on your own aspirations and life decisions. But what it does, is give you options later on. The first step involves understanding how many eggs you might have left, which, in turn, provides an estimate of how many mature eggs could be frozen. Assessing your Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) levels is the starting point, as it's a reliable marker of ovarian reserve.
Arva Health offers a comprehensive Fertility Test designed to provide insights into your ovarian reserve and other crucial factors to consider before opting for egg freezing. We provide a personalised report that breaks down your ovarian reserve, empowering you to engage in more informed discussions with your doctor.
Egg Freezing and Age
Does Egg Freezing work?
Science has come a really long way to make egg freezing a possibility for many women. However, its success highly depends on your age at which you freeze your eggs. If you freeze your eggs earlier, you will be able to extract more number and a higher quality of eggs.
Truth be told, data for success is still skewed. Pessimistic estimates report that egg freezing had a 35% rate of success however, recently a study in Spain concluded that odds are closer to 90% if you are able to retrieve around 20 eggs below the age of 35.
Rule of thumb: Find a doctor that is able to guide you on the right treatment plan for you. Success through the retrieval and thawing will largely depend on the healthcare provider you choose.
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