About Egg Freezing

California Fertility Partners' Scientific Director, Dr. Li Meng is a leading cryobiology expert who has established our Fertility Preservation Program. Dr. Meng is a pioneer in egg freezing who has helped develop and modify the media, instruments, and techniques used in egg freezing. He has successfully frozen over 3000 eggs and has achieved live births from those frozen eggs.

Thirty women who had had their eggs frozen have returned and have undergone the egg thaw cycle. Their eggs were thawed, fertilized, and transferred. In this group of women, 70% of the frozen eggs survived the thawing process. Of the eggs that survived the thawing process, 90% fertilized normally. Twenty women delivered healthy babies.

Oocyte (egg) freezing is a revolutionary technique that provides fertility options for women who choose to delay pregnancy for either medical or elective reasons. Pregnancy rates in nature are age-dependent. Therefore, as women age, their pregnancy rates decline. Egg freezing allows women to preserve their eggs when they are younger, to take advantage of the higher pregnancy rates, for future use.

To date, there are over 1600 births worldwide from frozen eggs. There have been no reported live-births from eggs frozen in women who are over 40 years old. Due to the natural egg aging process, it is more ideal to freeze eggs in women who are younger than 40 years old.

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) considers oocyte cryopreservation to be an experimental technique. ASRM will continue to consider it experimental until published studies regarding their risks, benefits, and overall safety and efficacy are sufficient to regard them as established medical practice. When intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) was first introduced, ASRM also labeled it an experimental technique. ICSI is now a routine technique used in IVF to improve fertilization in couples with male factor infertility.

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