EMBRYO FREEZING

The goal of every In Vitro Fertilization treatment consists of achieving the maximum possibilities of pregnancies in the fastest and most comfortable way as possible for our patients. Therefore, when we start a treatment, the fundamental idea is to be able to transfer to the inner of the uterus one or two top-quality embryos.

In some cases, when the embryo transfer stage arrives, we have in the laboratory a high number of good quality embryos, which are, logically, not possible to be transferred to the inner of the uterus due to the risk of multiple pregnancies.

These “spare” embryos are frozen in order to be used afterwards in case the couple decides to try to have a new gestation to complete their family, or when the attempt with “fresh” embryos has not been successful.

Over the last years, we have highly improved the embryo freezing forecast and nowadays we have adapted to our In Vitro Fertilization programme a new technique called “vitrification”, which optimizes the results with frozen embryos.

It is important to know some special characteristics in the use of this technique:

  • The embryo freezing is not carried out in every In Vitro Fertilization cycle. In most of the treatments we carry out soft stimulations in order to obtain an adequate number of eggs causing the minimum feeling of discomfort to the patients and spare embryos are not generated.
  • Not all the embryos have viability enough to be frozen. That is why, although several eggs have fertilized and therefore there are several embryos in the laboratory, in some of them we can forecast that they will not survive the freezing/unfreezing processes and therefore they will not be frozen. We can only freeze embryos in those cases where there is a reasonable possibility of success after the unfreezing.
  • Some of the embryos that we freeze do not survive the unfreezing, that is why the fact of starting a treatment does not necessarily mean that we will eventually transfer embryos to the uterus.
  • The pregnancy rates obtained thanks to the transfer of frozen embryos are slightly lower than by transferring fresh embryos.
  • The treatment that the patient needs to undergo in order to carry out the transfer of frozen embryos is simple, comfortable and short for the patient. No administration of injections is needed (only some patches and vaginal tablets), it is not prolonged longer than two weeks and no frequent controls are necessary (usually analysis are not carried out and normally not more that one ultrasound scan is necessary).
  • Pregnancies followed by this kind of treatments occur in a normal way. The possibility of complication is not higher than in other kind of treatments or than the pregnancies obtained in a “natural” way. It is not linked to malformations and the physical and intellectual development of the child is also comparable.

The frozen embryos are kept in custody in periods of one year extendable. As soon as the custody is not desired anymore, it is the unique decision of the couple to decide its destruction, donation for the investigation or donation to other couples having reproductive problems who would like to adopt them.

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