Fembryo Fertility & Gynaecology Clinic

Fertility Preservation

Fertility preservation is the process of saving or protecting eggs, sperm, or reproductive tissue so that a person can use them to have biological children in the future.

Fembryo Fertility Clinic – Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth

Egg, embryo, testis biopsy and semen cryopreservation

Cryopreservation involves the careful freezing and storage of good-quality eggs, embryos and semen/sperm. The freezing technique used at our unit is known as Vitrification (fast freezing) and has a 98% survival rate once the embryos are thawed. In case the patient’s cycle is not successful or they decide to have another child years later, these embryos may be unfrozen (thawed). Only the healthiest embryos are frozen.

Semen is also frozen and stored for later use in cases such as prior to vasectomy or any cancer treatment (eg.: chemotherapy and/or radiation) where fertility can be influenced due to the drugs administered.

Fertility preservation before cancer treatment

“Experts recommend freezing embryos or eggs, called cryopreservation, to help preserve fertility for certain females with cancer. It’s important to find a fertility specialist and center that has experience in these procedures.

The process of collecting eggs for embryo and egg freezing are the same. However, the timing can be different. Collecting eggs for embryo cryopreservation typically takes several days or weeks, depending on where a woman is in her menstrual cycle. Injectable hormone medications are usually given for females when they are safe to give. For egg cryopreservation, the time of the menstrual cycle is not as important.” – SOURCE

Social freezing of eggs to delay pregnancy until ready

“Egg freezing, also known as mature oocyte cryopreservation, is a method used to save women’s ability to get pregnant in the future. Eggs harvested from your ovaries are frozen unfertilised and stored for later use. A frozen egg can be thawed, combined with sperm in a lab and implanted back into the uterus (in vitro fertilisation).” – SOURCE

Fembryo Clinic has offered Social Freezing to many women who requested fertility preservation by egg collection and cryopreservation.

In the past, single women were faced with donor sperm insemination as the only option before they reached the age of reproductive failure. Now they can safely wait until they are ready to start a family of their own.

Ideally, women should freeze their eggs at the latest age of 34 if they are not in a situation to fall pregnant, whether they are not in a relationship or due to career.

This gives the woman of today the option of preserving her fertility without the burden of competing responsibilities.

Posthumous Sperm Retrieval

“Posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) is a procedure in which spermatozoa are collected from the testes of a human corpse after brain death.

While medical literature recommends that extraction take place no later than 24 hours after death, motile sperm has been successfully obtained as late as 36 hours after death, generally regardless of the cause of death or method of extraction. Up to this limit, the procedure has a high success rate, with sperm retrieved in nearly 100% of cases, and motile sperm in 80–90%

If the sperm is viable, fertilisation is generally achieved through intracytoplasmic sperm injection, a form of in vitro fertilisation. The success rate of in vitro fertilisation remains unchanged regardless of whether the sperm was retrieved from a living or dead donor.” – SOURCE