The era of the Back-ups. Fertility cryopreservation.

There has been a staggering increase of people looking to back-up their gametes in order to preserve their genetics and fertility for the future.

We see advertisements offering women the opportunity to save their eggs in places called Cryobanks. Their offer is focused in women as well as men. We know men freeze their sperm for future use. Couples freeze their embryos, because most fertility procedures get remaining embryos that might end in future babies.

More women freeze their eggs for several reasons. Most women are simply not prepared to become mothers during their best fertile years, and once they are finally prepared, their reserve of eggs has depleted considerably and the risk of genetic diseases increases. Considering this possibility, it is a great idea to have a back-up plan, which was not available a few years ago, and today is a reality with the opportunity of freezing the eggs when their fertility is at its best. It is a back-up plan and an increased number of successful women who are not prepared to give up their jobs and careers to become mothers are going for it.

Another important reason to freeze eggs is when a woman has not found the right partner yet. Once she finds it in the future, it will be possible to create healthy embryos using her partner’s sperm. Those embryos will have the age she had when she froze them, and the chances of genetic diseases will be reduced also be reduced.

One of the most remarkable situations to freeze eggs is cancer. The procedure is performed before the woman undergoes cancer treatment. Once recovered from cancer, the eggs will be available to be used in the future.

It is important to receive information and orientation from the oncologist regarding this possibility of fertility preservation. Although some of them still fail in mentioning it.

Ovarian tissue cryopreservation is a very useful technique in case of cancer treatments that need to start very quick, and do not have the time to wait for hormonal stimulation and egg retrieval to happen.

Men also have the need to preserve their fertility for several reasons. Many men today are aware that anything can change and affect their fertility at any moment. A fertility procedure should have a sperm back-up (frozen sperm) because 30% of men decrease the quality of the sperm sample the day of the fertility treatment due to stress.

Male cancer is another reason to freeze the gametes, because fertility chances decrease dramatically after cancer treatment. Although males have an increased chance of fertility recovery than women.  If men use any drugs, steroids, medications or consume alcohol, fertility might get impaired in the future. A back-up is a good strategy.

Embryo freeze is another alternative for fertility cryopreservation. Many patients with several embryos remaining from a fertility procedure have the benefit to freeze the remaining embryos and use them in the future. Couples looking for fertility preservation because of a disease get a benefit from a back-up.