The clinical egg freezing process is a highly organized, multi-step journey that requires expert laboratory tracking and close medical monitoring. The entire experience spans across several distinct phases, ensuring the highest standards of safety and care at every step.
Step 1: Ovarian Stimulation
The journey begins with targeted hormone medication to stimulate the ovary to mature multiple eggs simultaneously. Under normal circumstances, a woman produces just one mature egg per month, but ovarian stimulation encourages increased egg production. This phase requires precise individualized tracking over approximately 10 to 12 days.
During this period, you will visit our clinic for regular ultrasound scans and specific blood tests. These diagnostics allow our fertility specialist to monitor follicle growth and carefully evaluate your shifting hormone levels. This intensive tracking ensures optimal safety, helping patients minimize the risks associated with medication.
Step 2: The Egg Retrieval Procedure
Once the follicles reach their peak size, a final specialized injection is administered to trigger final egg maturation. The subsequent egg retrieval procedure is performed exactly 36 hours later. This minor surgical intervention is conducted under light sedation to ensure complete patient comfort throughout the process.
Using an advanced ultrasound probe, our specialist safely guides a fine needle through the vaginal wall directly into the ovary. The fluid inside each mature follicle is gently aspirated to collect the hidden oocytes. This precise egg retrieval process takes roughly 20 minutes, and patients can rest in our comfortable recovery lounge shortly after.
Step 3: Vitrification and Storage
Immediately following the successful egg retrieval, the collected fluid is rushed to our state-of-the-art clinical laboratory. Our expert embryologists immediately evaluate the cells under high magnification to isolate every single mature egg. Unmature cells are separated, as only fully mature oocytes are eligible for the freezing process.
The selected eggs are then preserved using vitrification, an advanced freezing technology. Vitrification instantly cools the cells to a sub-zero state, effectively eliminating the risk of internal ice crystal formation. This modern method ensures a significantly higher survival rate during the future freezing and thawing cycle compared to older techniques.
Once the vitrification process is complete, the eggs are frozen securely inside individual straws. These straws are transferred into specialized tanks filled with liquid nitrogen, where they are stored indefinitely at a constant temperature of -196°C. Biological activity is completely suspended within the liquid nitrogen, meaning long-term storage will not degrade the quality of your cells.
When you decide it is time to use your stored assets, the laboratory will safely thaw the cells. The surviving oocytes are then combined with a partner’s or donor sperm to achieve fertilization. To maximize success, our embryologists utilize advanced intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where a single high-quality sperm is placed directly into the egg to fertilize it.
The resulting embryo is cultured in our laboratory until it reaches the blastocyst stage. Finally, an embryo transfer places the blastocyst into the uterus to initiate a healthy pregnancy. If you eventually produce surplus embryos during standard in vitro fertilization, our clinic also provides options for freezing embryos for future use.
