Egg & embryo freezing questions

Overall, 5,000 babies have been born worldwide after treatment using frozen eggs. At CARE, in 2015 86% of eggs thawed survived the freeze-thaw process, and of those eggs that were fertilised and went on to blastocyst transfer, 48% implanted successfully.

There are all kinds of aspects that will affect your chances of success, from your age and the quality of your eggs to the number of eggs you freeze. If you’re looking to preserve as many eggs as possible, you might also be interested in our EggSafe package, where we’ll aim to gather and freeze 20 eggs over up to four egg collection procedures.

Alternatively, you can find out about our regular egg freezing service here.

Slightly lower but only by a very small amount. Using a clinic experienced in vitrification will ensure that frozen eggs have the highest chance of success.

Good quality embryos, remaining from your fresh treatment cycle, may be frozen for possible future use. Only about 98 in 100 embryos frozen with our current best practice survive the freeze thaw process and are suitable for transfer. Pregnancy rates vary depending on the embryo quality and female age at the time of freeze, but are close to those achieved with fresh embryos.

We can freeze embryos up to the statutory storage consent period of 10 years. There are regulations for extending storage periods up to a maximum of 55 years.

Several options exist if you do not wish to use your frozen embryos for your treatment. You may decide to donate them for embryology training, for research or you may choose to allow them to perish.

Our regulators, the HFEA, state we are only able to keep eggs in frozen storage for 10 years, this isn't down to the mother's age.

It used to be - but not now at the best clinics that are experienced at 'vitrification'. Egg freezing is now a very good option - with appropriate counselling (for example best to have about 20 eggs frozen, if possible)