All of our blog posts are written, edited, or produced by the London Women’s Clinic Content Team. This is a collaboration between our expert writers, health editors, and the leading researchers and senior doctors at our Harley Street clinic.
Last week, the UK’s official fertility regulator described egg and embryo freezing as the UK’s fastest growing fertility treatments. At the same time, London Women’s Clinic presented the hugely successful results of our 15-year major study of egg freezing.
We showed that our results are comparable to routine, ‘fresh’ IVF, showing once and for all that egg freezing is a reliable treatment for women hoping to postpone their fertility and pregnancy plans.
‘When our results are considered alongside those from other large centres, in the USA, we have a body of evidence which is consistent in its findings and reassuring for patients,’ said Professor Nick Macklon, medical director of the London Women’s Clinic and an author of the study. ‘The consistency of the results suggest that the doubts still commonly expressed about the reliability of egg freezing are misplaced.’
Freezing your eggs with the London Women's Clinic
London Women’s Clinic has a dedicated egg freezing team, pictured below, who work closely with patients and our sister clinics on the full range of our IVF treatments. You can reach out to our treatment coordinator below to book in a free introduction, or register for your in-depth Fertility MOT.
The UK regulator, the HFEA, highlighted a huge upturn in egg freezing in its annual report on treatment trends for 2022, with an 81% rise in egg freezing treatments over that year. Our study reflected this trend over the longer term, reporting a rise in annual patient numbers from 150 women in 2015 to more than 800 in 2022.
The HFEA attributed the general increase in egg storage cycles in part to better freezing techniques, notably the fast-freeze technology of vitrification. Improved survival rates, said the HFEA, have given women greater confidence in freezing eggs.
The results of the LWC study, which were published in the peer-reviewed journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online, now add considerably to what we know about egg freezing - and place LWC and its partner clinic the London Egg Bank squarely at the forefront of egg freezing in Britain.
Our results suggest that women who thawed their eggs had frozen them at an average age of 37.6 years and returned to use them two or three years later. Most importantly, around one in four of them had a baby, a success rate which rose cumulatively to one in three when all embryo transfers were included. This rose even higher to 57% in those who had stored their eggs when aged under 35.
These outcomes are comparable with those of routine IVF with fresh eggs, when age, egg quality and egg quantity are taken into account.
The HFEA in its latest report correctly emphasised the effect of age in freezing eggs, noting that results - as in all fertility treatments - will be better in women who freeze their eggs before the age of 35. It is the age at which the eggs are frozen which matters, not the age at which the patient returns to thaw and use her eggs.
Moreover, HFEA data show that the average age of first-time IVF patients has increased to just over 35 years, an age at which natural fertility starts to decline. ‘The chance of a birth rapidly decreases with age,’ said the Chair of the HFEA, ‘so early access to fertility treatment is crucial for those who need it.’
Egg freezing, while not a guarantee of having a baby, has emerged as an opportunity to ‘preserve fertility’ and postpone fertility to a later date.
‘It thus seems reasonable to conclude,’ said Professor Macklon, ‘that based on our results and those of other studies egg freezing and thawing can provide a very real opportunity for women to achieve pregnancy and live birth at a time of their choosing. With consistency in results, patient expectations can be managed similarly to those of all IVF treatments when age and egg quality and quantity are taken into account.’
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