Rise in women freezing their eggs at fertility clinics

There has been a huge rise in the number of British women freezing their eggs in private fertility clinics. But although many pay up to £6,000 for the initial harvesting - and then freezing - of their eggs, and a further £250 for an annual 'storage fee,' these women have just eight per cent chance of conceiving. According to new figures shown to the Sunday Times, just 21 babies were born out of 253 fertility cycles between 1991 and 2012. Fertility expert Lord Winston told Hannah Summers of the newspaper that by the age of 40, women's chances of having successful in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) are the same as her getting pregnant naturally. 'Egg freezing remains an experimental treatment which can only be justified when there is no alternative,' he said. 'There are innumerable clinics that will freeze your eggs for a handsome fee but the justification for this is highly dubious.' Celine Dion famously conceived twins in 2009 after having her eggs frozen for eight years Egg freezing has been available in the UK for more than a decade, though the treatment is still considered relatively new. Many people feel uncomfortable with the notion of women doing it for 'social' reasons, rather than medical conditions. It is estimated that 70 per cent of the 2,262 women who had 20,465 eggs frozen in the 1991 and 2012 time period, did so for social reasons, rather than medial ones. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is the statutory body that regulates fertility treatments including IVF and the storage of sperm and eggs. One of its responsibilities is to give advice and information to people seeking licensed treatment and to the general public. The Sunday Times also reported the latest data from HFEA said that 284 women froze their eggs in 2009. The figure rose to 580 in 2012. The singer, Celine Dion, famously froze her eggs for eight years in New York, before successfully conceiving in 2009 at the age of 41. Celine fell pregnant following her sixth IVF attempt and turning to acupuncture to improve her chances of conceiving. She gave birth to twin sons Eddy and Nelson in 2010 and called them her 'miracle' babies. In egg freezing, eggs can be stored for up to ten years in liquid nitrogen at 196 degrees centigrade - rather like a deep freeze. When a woman decides the time is right for a baby, the egg is thawed slowly which involves a carefully controlled drop in temperature before being warmed up again. After being injected with sperm, the egg is then inserted into her uterus - rather like a smear test. If the technique is successful, the patient then becomes pregnant as normal. Article: 20th April 2014 www.dailymail.co.uk

Choosing to delay Cancer treatment to preserve Fertility

When Amy Miller was diagnosed with bowel cancer in March 2008, aged 32, her first thought was how she was going to beat the disease. "I was saying to my doctors, 'Oh my God, oh my God, start doing something now.'" But her doctors suggested delaying treatment for up to 20 days. The tumour was about 10cm in diameter at this point and lay close to her reproductive organs. Dr Miller, who has a PhD in Medieval art history, said: "It might not be right for everyone but in my case it wasn't an aggressive form of cancer and I was told that a delay of 20 days wouldn't make any difference to the effectiveness of my treatment - whereas without the delay I would never be able to have my own children. 'Difficult conversation' "Sometimes we can get so preoccupied by death that we forget to see the patient as a person who has a future ahead of them too." Dr Miller and her then-partner, now husband, Justin Ward, were referred for fertility counselling immediately after she was diagnosed. "Obviously I wasn't desperate to have children, otherwise I would have had them by then," she said. "I was 32 at the time and I was still studying for my PHD and my husband was still studying too. We hadn't really thought about having kids, but being faced with the possibility of not being able to have them, that was very different." Cancer should not define people, Dr Miller said Cancer treatment often destroys women's eggs and leaves the patient infertile, but with early intervention eggs can be harvested and fertilised and the embryos then frozen and stored until the couple wish to use them. The Teenage Cancer Trust said more care needed to be given to young women requiring cancer treatment that could damage their chances of having children. However, Dr Allan Pacey from the University of Sheffield said fertility preservation was often not a realistic option if cancer treatment needed to start immediately. Responding to a study by the cancer trust, Dr Dan Yeomanson, a consultant paediatric oncologist for Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust, said there was still a need to discuss fertility issues with young patients - especially females - before treatment began, even if there were no options available for fertility preservation. Dr Miller said: "All of a sudden we had to have this really difficult conversation. We were still getting our heads around the cancer and didn't know if I was going to survive and they were asking us if we wanted to have children together. "That's a big decision for a couple to make. "They take you down the adoption route essentially and talk through what would happen to the embryos if you break up, or in the event of one or both of you dying. "But I'm so glad they did." 'Patient empowerment' Dr Miller, who is from Kenilworth in Warwickshire, said she was thrown headlong into the medical system from the instant she was diagnosed. "It's serious, it's immediate and it's complicated. They make appointments for you and you go. The staff are brilliant but it is a very dehumanising experience. "Going for fertility counselling was really comforting - just having someone listen to you that's not concerned about the cancer as such, who asks about how you are feeling, is so welcome and refreshing. "When you're dealing with cancer you don't know whether you have any future. Going through fertility treatment and creating viable embryos felt good because I knew if something happened to me, at least Justin and my family would have something of me that would survive into the future. "I think it is so important to get counselling and have the discussions early on about the impact on your reproductive system, not only if you want to have children. It's understandable that oncologists want to focus on treating the cancer, but the cancer should not become the person. "Making decisions about your own reproductive system is important to retaining a sense of wholeness and empowers you as a patient." Dr Miller has now been clear of cancer for four years, having undergone surgery and radiation therapy - but she has no immediate plans to start a family. She told the BBC she and her husband felt under no pressure. "One good thing to come out of all this is that I don't feel guilty now [about] having children later in life because my eggs have been frozen as my 32-year-old self. As we would have to go down the surrogacy route too, there is no risk to the baby from delaying this." Article: 21st July 2013 www.bbc.co.uk

Troubling truth about egg freezing: Its expensive and medically risky

Next month, during a rare break from her frenetic career as a violinist, Linzi Stoppard will begin the gruelling preparations required to have her eggs frozen.
Daily hormone injections will shut down her ovaries. Then, further injections will cause what is known as 'hyper-ovulation'. Instead of producing one or two mature follicles - fluid-filled sacs located inside the ovaries - she will produce dozens.

A final injection will be given to mature them. After around four weeks of treatment, Linzi, 31, will be sedated while an embryologist harvests around ten healthy eggs using an ultrasound probe and places them in a tank of liquid nitrogen, stored at -195C until such time as she needs them.

'It's a back-up plan for the future, if we find we struggle to conceive naturally when the time is right,' is the way Linzi and her husband, Will, look at it. If she cannot conceive naturally when the 'right time' comes, she hopes that doctors can use her stored, younger eggs and help her to conceive using IVF.

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Older Women freeze their eggs to wait for Mr Right

Failure to find 'Mr Right' is driving growing numbers of older women to put motherhood on ice.
Women in their 30s and 40s, who once would have settled for second best, are freezing their eggs while they continue their search for a man who is father material, British fertility doctors have revealed.

Their plight echoes that of radio presenter and model Lisa Snowdon who recently revealed her worries that she is part of a growing female phenomenon of SAS: single, attractive and successful women who have everything except for a partner.

Miss Snowdon, 38, counts George Clooney among her former beaus but has been single for five years.

Last night, British fertility doctors said contrary to the popular perception, the majority of women freezing their eggs for non-medical reasons are not career hungry but simply unlucky in love.

The youngest woman seen at the Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine is 28 - most are in their late 30s. Dr Srilatha Gorthi, a senior research fellow at the clinic, said: 'The come in their 30s or late 30s if they haven't found the right partner.'

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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.

To read more go to http://bit.ly/bCxkGv