Breakthrough Egg Freezing Technology to Offer Women a 'Backup Plan'

Shady Grove Fertility, the USA's largest fertility and IVF center, announces the opening of its Center for Fertility Preservation, offering the most advanced technology in egg freezing. The new technology "flash freezes" a woman's eggs until she's ready to conceive, and yields significantly higher pregnancy rates over older technology.
"A woman's ability to conceive is largely dependant on the age of her eggs," said Robert Stillman, MD, Medical Director of Shady Grove Fertility Center. "Fertility is naturally declining with age, but the chances of getting pregnant drop off sharply after age 35. By the time she reaches her early 40's there is only a very small chance of achieving a healthy, natural pregnancy and delivery."

Until recently, older egg cryopreservation techniques were yielding unpredictable results and lower pregnancy rates. For this reason, they have been used primarily as a last resort for women with medical complications that compromise their fertility such as those at risk for premature menopause or those about to undergo cancer treatment. The unpredictable outcomes prevented most fertility centers from routinely offering the technology to women who wanted to proactively freeze and store their eggs for future use.

The Center for Fertility Preservation, along with a handful of other fertility centers across the U.S., is now able to offer a new, more successful egg freezing technique known as vitrification. Vitrification is a flash freezing technique which protects eggs from injury during the freezing and subsequent thawing process. The latest experience at Shady Grove Fertility and other leading groups consistently demonstrates dramatically improved pregnancy rates as compared to outcomes when using the now outdated, slow egg freezing methods.

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