What are the advantages of embryo cryopreservation?
Embryo freezing can help people get pregnant later in life if they are facing current barriers, such as:
- Advancing age.
- Gender transition.
- Infertility issues.
- Social/personal reasons like if you’re pursuing higher level education or have professional demands and plan to delay pregnancy for several years.
- Treatment that may damage fertility (for example, chemotherapy or pelvic radiation therapy for cancer).
- Upcoming military deployment.
- Women without a partner may be concerned about advancing age and choose to either freeze eggs or embryos that they create with donor sperm.
What are the risks or complications of this procedure?
- Embryos are damaged during the freezing process.
- Embryos that are unable to be frozen.
- Failure to conceive after embryos have been thawed and implanted.
- Increased rates of pregnancy-related medical complications such as preeclampsia and placenta accrete spectrum.
- If more than one embryo is implanted, multiple births occur (twins or triplets).