Ovules Freezing Process – Mapfre Blogs

The freezing of ovules, or vitrification, is a safe and effective procedure to preserve fertility. Ideal for women who want to postpone motherhood or should undergo treatments that may affect their ovaries. The process lasts about two weeks and allows the ovules to be preserved for years to be fertilized in the future.

Today we have at our disposal the technology that allows a woman to obtain and keep them in the laboratory to be fertilized and transferred to the uterus in the futureto get a pregnancy years later.

There are several reasons for this procedure:

• The most frequent is delay motherhood. It is demonstrated that at the highest age it is more difficult to get a pregnancy spontaneously and the higher the rate of abortions and chromosomal abnormalities. From the age of 35, the ovarian reserve significantly decreases And it is more frequent that the ovules present errors, so a woman who expects to take her motherhood beyond 35 years can keep her eggs to have that “reservation” in case he does not get pregnant spontaneously.
• It is also a procedure that should be considered in any woman who wants to keep her options to be a mother Before being subject to chemotherapy or radiotherapy or surgery treatment that can damage your reproductive capacity. In this case, in our country the procedure It can be funded by Social Securityunlike in the rest of the indications, in which it is in charge of the patient and has an average cost between 2,500 and € 4,000.
• It is an option for women or couples who, due to moral or religious convictions, do not contemplate the freezing of embryos.

The requirement is thatThat the ovary has the potential to offer a minimum response to treatmenttherefore, it is not indicated in women with low ovarian reserve or over 40 years.

Vitrification

Popularly we talk about freezing ovules or embryos, but the current term is vitrification. The first cases of cryopreservation of ovules with a technique to which it was called freezing yielded mediocre results, and gradually, technical improvements were introduced that have taken us to the present to what is known as vitrification, which consists of introDucine to the ovule in an adequate medium and lower the temperature in an ultra -granted way to -196ºC to which it will remain until you have to recover it.

To understand how the entire process works, we must make a reminder of what happens in the ovary during the menstrual cycle: under physiological conditions, depending on the age and characteristics of each woman, during the first days of the cycle the maturation of a cohort of initial follicles is launched, which will be of the order of 10-15 or more in young women, number that will reduce with age, but only one will continue to mature causing a single mature ovule At the time of ovulation and the rest will be lost, to fulfill a security measure in human, in which most pregnancies are unique, unlike other species that have multiple pregnancies.

What is freezing ovules?

The treatment consists of a subcutaneous injection, which has the purpose of jumping these security measures and that all the follicles available, in both ovaries, reach the maximum state of maturity, at which time a new medication will be administered that will stimulate the final maturation and proceed to extract them through Ovarian puncture about 34 hours after that last injection. This whole process lasts approximately two weeks, since the treatment begins to the puncture, during which the patient must go to the clinic to make ultrasound and analytical controls very frequently.

How is it done?

The ovarian puncture procedure is simple and fast, is done under sedation and is ultrasound vaginally. All the follicles that have reached maturity are punctured and the liquid inside is aspired in which an ovule floats in each follicle. This liquid is quickly transferred to the laboratory where they will proceed to preparation for the ovules to be vitrified. As the effects of anesthesia disappear, the patient can register at home and make normal life virtually immediately.

The vitrified ovules They can be kept for years Until it is necessary to recover them, at which time a “defrosting (devitrification)” process will be Contact the ovule with sperm so that one of them manages to fertilize it by itself. And finally deposit an embryo at 3-5 days inside the uterus and hopefully get a pregnancy.

The risks an ovules vitrification cycle are basically:

• The possibility of ovarian hyperstimulationwhich is an especially exaggerated reaction from ovaries to medication, which will increase in excess size and fill liquid, causing different symptomatology that can become serious due to the accumulation of liquid in the abdomen and thorax of the woman. This complication is very rare and the risk is minimized by making the relevant ultrasound and analytical controls
• The complications of ovarian puncture that have the remote risk of abdominal viscera injury, hemorrhage or infection.

The survival rate of vitrified ovules with the current technique is 90 % so it constitutes a safe strategy to preserve fertility at the best time to rescue it when the conditions have changed.

If you need advice or follow -up on the process of freezing eggs or you are trying to get pregnant, Mapfre’s health insurance have a great medical picture of specialists.

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What you should know …

• Today we have at our disposal the technology that allows a woman to obtain and keep them in the laboratory to be fertilized and transferred to the uterus in the future, to get a pregnancy years later.
• This whole process lasts about two weeks, since the treatment begins to the puncture, during which the patient must go to the clinic to make ultrasound and analytical controls very frequently.
• Vitrified ovules can be maintained until it is necessary to recover them, at which time a “defrosting (devitrification)” process will be proceeded to fertilize them with a microinage technique of a sperm inside the ovule.

Posted by Dr. Natalia García Montaner