Egg freezing is no longer a sci-fi, but will they ever be used?

Egg freezing for medical reasons is in practice for decades now, with 5,000 babies have been born from eggs that were frozen, thawed and fertilized.

In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine decided egg freezing was no longer an experimental procedure.

That opened the door for commercializing and marketing the procedure and opening new avenues for women who are simply worried about their declining fertility — what's being dubbed as "social" egg freezing.

The "social" egg freezing business these days is good says a medical director of one such clinic in California.

No insurance company covers it, but in October, a third tech company, Intel, joined Apple and Facebook in offering to pay the costs of egg freezing for employees.

Preserved eggs offer women a ticket to beat the ticking biological clock inside her.

But Nature always prevails and the older a woman is when she freezes her eggs and when she uses them with in vitro fertilization, the lower her chances of success.

Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) collects data on egg freezing in the U.S. and its president Dr. Doody says in 2013, about 4,000 women froze their eggs, up from about 2,500 the year before.

But till date after the experimental ban was lifted in 2012, very few women have gone back to use the frozen eggs.

SART found that of the 353 egg-thaw cycles in 2012, only 83 resulted in live births. In 2013, there were 414 thaw cycles and 99 live births.

Overall, the success rate of live births from frozen eggs has remained consistently pretty low, at about 20 to 24 percent since 2009.

That being said, even a higher success rate does not guarantee a woman that she will have a baby from the egg she banked.

Most of the women who bank the eggs are amazing professional and it is difficult for them to find a right partner to embark on a partnership and parenthood with.

It just buys you more time against your aging body and eggs, and its use does gives you a little bit more time.

But we will have to wait for years to gather enough data, to know how practical is the procedure for women to fulfill the dreams of motherhood? 

References:

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/24/456671203/more-women-are-freezing-their-eggs-but-will-they-ever-use-them

http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282%2813%2900519-0/fulltext