Egg Freezing Through Vitrification at RMA of New York

This video provides an overview of the vitrification, or “fast freezing,” method of freezing a woman’s eggs. Vitrification represents the most advanced technology available for successfully cryopreserving eggs for use in future pregnancy attempts.

RMA of New York Laboratory Director, Christine Briton-Jones, and Embryology Director, Marlena Duke, take us inside the IVF laboratory and describe the process of egg vitrification and the steps that occur in order to successfully and safely freeze and store cryopreserved eggs and embryos.

The vitrification method has revolutionized the ability to freeze and successfully thaw frozen eggs. Unlike prior slow-freeze methods, with vitrification, rapid cooling rates spare the egg from forming ice crystals. As a result, eggs are less likely to fracture upon thawing, leading to higher fertilization and pregnancy rates.

Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is ideal for women who have chosen to delay motherhood due to career, education or lifestyle reasons. It may also be indicated for medical reasons, such as a recent cancer diagnosis in which chemotherapy or other treatment could put a woman’s future fertility at risk.

For more information: http://rmany.com/patient-resources/infertility-glossary/egg-freezing-oocyte-cryopreservation/

I am Dr. Christine Briton-Jones, I am the Director of Laboratory Services here at RMA of New York, and here at RMA, we are very serious about doing the best that we can do, & the way we do that, we stick strictly to the ASRM guidelines, American Society for Reproductive Medicine, we also report to the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, and also to the Center for Disease Control. But rather than tell you about it, I’d rather show you. So let’s begin in the lab.

Vitrification is a technique used to preserve a woman’s eggs that has revolutionized fertility preservation. The term vitrification, comes from the Latin word vitrum, meaning glass. When eggs are vitrified, they are cooled so quickly that they are transformed into a glass-like state. Prior to the use of vitrification, eggs were routinely preserved by slow freezing. The biggest drawback of the slow-freezing method is the formation of ice crystals during cooling which can irreparably damage the egg’s cell membrane. Vitrification is successful largely because it doesn’t allow for ice crystal formation. On the day of the egg freezing procedure, a reproductive endocrinologist retrieves the eggs using ultrasound guidance. The fluid from each follicle is aspirated into a test tube, and brought into the embryology lab. An embryologist pours the fluid into a dish to search for the egg. The egg is readily apparent, because it is surrounded by a mass of clear-looking cumulus cells. The egg is picked up with a pipette and placed in a culture dish labeled with the patient’s name. At the end of the egg retrieval the culture dish containing all the eggs is placed in an incubator until the freezing procedure is ready to begin. Only the eggs which have completed the maturation process are capable of being fertilized by a sperm so it is important to evaluate the maturity of the egg prior to freezing. This evaluation requires the removal of the cumulus cells surrounding the egg by repeated pipetting, and observation of the egg under high magnification. The eggs determined to be mature are now ready to be frozen.

The first step of the vitrification procedure is to move the eggs through a series of solutions, each for a specific duration, to gradually remove water from the eggs. The water needs to be removed to avoid ice crystal formation. As the water is removed the eggs visibly shrink; the solution also contains a cryoprotectant, which penetrates the egg’s cell membrane to replace the removed water. The cryoprotectant acts like anti-freeze to protect the egg during vitrification.

The final step is to place the eggs on a specialized vitrification device in a very small volume of media. The vitrification device is labeled with the patient information and witnessed by a second embryologist. Vitrification occurs as the device containing the eggs is plunged into liquid nitrogen. The eggs are cooled at an ultra-rapid rate, to negative one hundred and ninety six degrees Celsius, and the media drop containing the eggs is transformed into a glass-like bead.

The device is then placed in a labeled goblet on a labeled cane for secure storage. Each cane contains the eggs of only one patient. The patient’s cane is then placed in a long term storage container filled with liquid nitrogen called a dewar, which is equipped with a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week alarm monitoring system to indicate any change in temperature. When maintained at this extremely low temperature, eggs can theoretically be kept indefinitely, until the patient is ready to use them...

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