Women must understand costs and success rate of egg freezing

Analysis: Around four in five cases are unsuccessful, writes Maya Oppenheim

Egg freezing is when a woman's eggs are taken from her ovaries, frozen and stored for use at a later date in a bid to prolong fertility (Getty)

Egg freezing may have become significantly more popular in recent years but women need to be properly educated about the costs and success rate before embarking on the lengthy medical process.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the British Fertility Society (BFS) have called for women to be adequately informed about egg freezing in new research.

Egg freezing – in which eggs are gathered from a woman’s ovaries, frozen and stored for use at a later date in a bid to prolong fertility – cannot be accessed through the NHS for non-medical reasons and must be accessed through the private health sector.

The whole process for egg freezing and thawing costs an average of between £7,000 and £8,000, while a single cycle of IVF can cost over £5,000, making it out of reach for many.

The latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in 2016 show there were 1,310 egg freezing cycles in the UK and 519 cycles of treatment using frozen eggs – both from women storing their eggs for medical or optional reasons.

Some 18 per cent of these IVF treatments were successful, which means around four in five cases were unsuccessful.

Richard Anderson, professor of clinical reproductive science at the University of Edinburgh and lead author of the RCOG’s paper, said: “Egg freezing provides women who are not in a position to start their family an opportunity to mitigate their decline in fertility with increasing age.

“While often perceived as a form of insurance, we feel strongly that women undertaking egg freezing do so with a full understanding of the likelihood of success, as well as the costs and risks.”

The number of women freezing their eggs has risen by 257 per cent in recent years, with 1,462 egg freezing cycles in 2017 compared with 410 in 2012.

Melanie Davies, spokesperson for the RCOG, said: “There is a lot of confusion around egg freezing and it is really important to get good information out there. Education about fertility has never been emphasised. Women often approach services to gets eggs frozen when their eggs are not fertile. Most women who approach services are over 35. It would be much better if women were 28.

“We are getting much better at egg freezing. There are no guarantees but it should now be equivalent for IVF treatment if you are 25 or 28 when you freeze eggs.”