Why are some embryos not suitable for freezing?
Why are only some embryos frozen? Not all embryos develop well in the laboratory. Any embryos which are not well developed (frozen or not frozen) have little chance of resulting in a pregnancy so freezing all embryos can give couples false expectations and increased costs.
What happens to the embryos that are not used and remain frozen?
Some couples decide not to renew their embryo storage and let the clinic handle it. Others choose to become involved, becoming a part of the thawing process and having some sort of ceremony to pay honor to the embryos as they transition from their frozen to thawed state.
Can you preserve an embryo?
Frozen embryos are stored and monitored at hospital facilities, usually a lab, or commercial reproductive medicine centers. They can be safely preserved for 10 years and even longer.
Can embryos be frozen forever?
Although embryos can be kept frozen forever, most patients reach a point when they need to decide what to do with unused embryos. There is always the option to discard frozen embryos.
Why do some embryos not survive thaw?
Some embryos (or possibly all embryos) will not survive the freezing and thawing process if cells are damaged. Frozen embryo survival rates are more than 90\% if embryos are frozen by ‘vitrification’ at the blastocyst stage (5-6 days after fertilisation).
Are only good embryos frozen?
Not all embryos are suitable for freezing so only good quality embryos will be chosen to freeze. Embryos can be frozen at different stages of their development – when they’re just a single cell, at the two to eight cell stage or later in their development (called the blastocyst stage).
Is it wrong to destroy an embryo?
Once embryos have been produced, it is permissible to destroy them in research, provided that they are unwanted and that the parents consent. Therefore, in producing embryos for research, we produce them with the intention of treating them in permissible ways. It is difficult to see what could be wrong with that.
What happens to embryos if they don’t implant?
If the embryo does not implant, it stops growing, because it is not able to establish a blood supply from the uterine lining. The cells dies, and are silently reabsorbed. Cells die in the body all the time, and the body reabsorbs these quietly and efficiently.
Why do embryos not survive thaw?
There is always a chance that the embryo will not survive a thaw due to outside factors that cannot be controlled. Typically we see around a 95\% survival rate. Transferring the thawed embryo prior to full re-expansion gives the embryo the chance to re-expand in the natural uterine environment.
What happens in frozen embryo transfer?
A frozen embryo transfer (FET) is a type of IVF treatment where a cryopreserved embryo created in a full IVF cycle is thawed and transferred to a uterus. FET typically uses “extra” embryos a couple has from a previous conventional IVF cycle. A cryopreserved embryo can also be a donor embryo.
How long can embryos be preserved?
How long can my embryos be stored for? The standard storage period for embryos is normally 10 years, although women in certain circumstances can store their embryos for up to 55 years.
Why did my embryos not make it to blastocyst?
The failure of some embryos to not make it to the blastocyst stage is most likely due to a defect in the embryo. If, for example, we have 10 embryos on day 3 and we select two to transfer on day 3, we may not select the right embryos. Most studies indicate the chance for a day 3 embryo to implant is about 20 percent.