Worldwide, there are more pregnancies that result from frozen embryo transfers.
No one has ever shown that for the vast majority of women, it’s actually a better thing to freeze all the embryos and come back later. My strong suspicion is it’s because worldwide, we do more frozen embryo transfers as compared to fresh transfers. There would be a group of women and the main women I’m referring to here would be if there’s been a degree of hyperstimulation, I would recommend freezing all the embryos, letting the hormones settle down and coming back in a natural cycle to do a frozen transfer.
The other situation that we would do a frozen embryo transfer, as opposed to a fresh transfer in that cycle, would be logistics. If a woman just can’t remain around for the five days after the egg collection to have it done.
The other reason would be if a woman would like to have all the embryos genetically screened, we would screen them and then the results would come back after about 12 days and with the genetically normal embryos, we would prepare to do a frozen transfer.
Dr. Jenny Cook is a Fertility Specialist who works at the Monash IVF clinic. She has published widely in the area of Gynaecological Laparoscopy and has presented at many national and international meetings. She is recognised for her experience in laparoscopic gynaecological procedures.
