Fertility Preservation

Definitely not! And this is a general misconception! Each day a different group of follicles starts growing in a woman’s ovaries. The recruitment of these follicles and their first phase of growth are independent from hormones. When these follicles reach a certain size, their growth becomes dependent on hormones. The biggest and strongest of these follicles starts “taking all the hormones” produced by the woman’s body and continues to grow alone while the other follicles do not have “enough hormones” and die. The injection of hormones used during ovarian stimulation saves these follicles from dying but does not lead to recruiting more oocytes from the ovaries.

The duration of freezing does not affect embryo or egg quality. One day of freezing is equivalent to a hundred years. In the past a lot of embryos or eggs used to degenerate during the freezing or the thawing process. However, with the emergence of vitrification, egg and embryo survival rates have become higher than 90%. Few months ago, a baby was born from an embryo that was frozen 30 years ago.