Over the past 30 years the average age at which women in Greece have their first child has risen steadily. In 2021 the average age reached 31, and more than 36% of the babies born in 2022 were to mothers over 35.
Egg freezing is a method that helps women preserve their fertility and achieve a pregnancy in the future. This treatment has become possible thanks to new techniques developed in the field of tissue cryopreservation. Unfertilized eggs can be cryopreserved and stored safely, so that success rates remain unaffected by time. Frozen eggs can be thawed in the future, fertilized with sperm in the laboratory and, once embryos have been created, transferred into the uterus. Today, vitrification offers survival rates after thawing of up to 85%.
Why women choose to freeze their eggs
- Cryopreservation allows you to make choices that reflect what you really want and to live a life that is truly your own. You may not feel ready yet, because you want to continue your studies or because you have other priorities at the moment.
- Treatments that affect fertility: people who have to undergo treatments that affect fertility, such as chemotherapy, may want to freeze their eggs before treatment.
- Some women have an increased risk of premature ovarian insufficiency and early menopause.
How age affects women's fertility
Ovarian reserve
Every woman is born with a particular and unique number of eggs, ready to mature and be released during her lifetime. This number is her ovarian reserve.
Number of eggs
A woman is born with 1 to 2 million eggs on average, and by the age of 30 that number may have fallen by at least 90%. By the time she reaches 40 she may have ten times fewer eggs in her ovaries than she had at 25. But do not worry: every woman is unique, and so is her egg reserve. You may have more or fewer eggs than another woman of the same age.
Egg quality and the chance of pregnancy
The quality of the eggs is equally important. After 35, quality begins to decline, leading to an increased risk of infertility and of chromosomal problems in the embryos. This is worth thinking about if you are planning to start your own family, or even to add to the one you already have. Remember that using eggs frozen at a young age carries a very small risk of chromosomal abnormalities in the embryos, compared with conceiving at an older reproductive age.
The egg freezing process
Although a woman can freeze her eggs at any age, egg freezing is generally recommended up to the age of 38, depending on each woman's particular circumstances, such as her ovarian reserve. The earlier the better, certainly. The process consists of three stages.
- Stimulation of the ovaries with injectable medication, to produce enough good-quality eggs.
- Egg collection.
- Preparation of the eggs and their cryopreservation by vitrification.
Thousands of healthy children have been born worldwide after egg cryopreservation. Research to date shows no difference in their health compared with children born through conventional IVF or ICSI.
Recently, under the new law 4958/2022, women who are married or in a civil partnership no longer need their husband's or partner's consent to freeze their eggs, which the previous law of 2005 required. The old law provided that, if the marriage ended, the genetic material a woman had collected within the marriage would be destroyed. The new law allows genetic material to be used after a divorce. Women can now keep their eggs frozen, for no fixed period, for as long as they wish, with the sole requirement that they use them before the age of 54.
Frequently asked questions about egg freezing
How many eggs does a woman need to freeze?
At least 10 eggs usually need to be frozen. Most women under 35 can produce 10 eggs during one cycle of ovarian stimulation. Older women may need more stimulation cycles in order to collect an adequate number of eggs. In general, the older a woman is, the greater the number of eggs needed to improve the chance of success.
For how many years can eggs remain in the freezing bank?
Current legislation initially provides for freezing for 5 years, with the right to successive five-year extensions and no upper limit on the extension period.
What is the best age to freeze eggs?
Fertility begins to decline from the age of thirty and falls significantly after the age of forty. The optimal age to freeze your eggs is therefore in your late twenties. Freezing eggs between thirty and thirty-five is also quite common, however.
How safe a procedure is egg freezing?
The procedure is extremely safe. Some women may have mild side effects from the ovarian stimulation drugs, such as bloating or abdominal discomfort for a few days. Modern stimulation protocols have essentially eliminated the risk of complications. We will tell you what symptoms to look out for, so that you can contact your doctor for further advice if you need to.
What is the success rate after the eggs are thawed?
The younger a woman is when she freezes her eggs, the better their quality and therefore the greater the chance of pregnancy when they are thawed. In large studies in the USA, the United Kingdom and Spain, covering thousands of cases of healthy women and donors, survival was above 85% and pregnancies per embryo transfer ranged from 45 to 53%.