In egg freezing or social egg freezing, young women have their eggs frozen. This makes them available for artificial insemination at a later date. The desire to have a child can still be fulfilled by this method at an advanced age, as soon as the right time for pregnancy has come for the woman.

However, social egg freezing is prohibited in Austria.

In Austria, oocytes may only be retrieved and stored if there is a risk of losing the ability to reproduce due to a physical condition or therapy (e.g. chemotherapy).

Only for reasons of simpler family planning, oocytes may not be cryopreserved.

In Austria, medical necessity is a prerequisite. This is given in these cases, among others:

• In the case of ovarian cysts or endometriosis: if parts of the ovary have to be removed by surgery.
• In the case of treatments that affect the ovaries.
• In autoimmune diseases, such as or Diabetes Mellitus, HashimotoThyroiditis.
• In cancers where chemotherapy or radiotherapy destroys the eggs or where the ovaries have to be removed.

We first have an initial conservation with you. After that, we perform all the necessary examinations. As a rule, hormone stimulation is then carried out, which results in the growth of several oocytes. We collect the eggs at the optimal time of maturation and freeze them in liquid nitrogen.

If possible, we store up to 30 oocytes so that there are sufficient oocytes for later artificial insemination. The majority of eggs survive the freezing process without damage. The quality of the eggs does not decrease even if they are stored for years.

60 to 85 percent of all women who use frozen eggs for artificial insemination become pregnant. However, there is no guarantee. Success depends largely on the age of the woman when the eggs are retrieved and on how old she is when the artificial insemination is performed.

The best chance of success is when the eggs are retrieved and cryopreserved before the age of 35. This is because the number of eggs decreases with age. At the same time, the risk of genetic defects increases.