There are situations in which a woman must postpone her search for pregnancy and there is a risk of losing her fertility during this waiting time. An example is when a woman is diagnosed with cancer. He must then undergo a series of treatments that may include chemotherapy or radiation. Both radiation and chemotherapy can destroy the egg reserve in a woman’s ovary and make her sterile. One solution to this problem is to remove the eggs or part of the ovarian tissue before therapy and keep them frozen for later use when the woman has healed.
Another circumstance is given by the fact that women are born with a limited number of eggs in their ovary and that a significant number of them are lost each month. A woman’s egg reserve then begins to be diminished even from the age of 35 onwards and after the age of 40 it is very low. This circumstance makes it difficult for a woman to get pregnant after the age of 40. Women are forced to seek pregnancy as much as possible before the age of 35 and this is not always possible.
A big problem with freezing cells and tissues is that during the process, the water inside the cell (the egg has a high water content) forms ice crystals and these crystals can break the cell and destroy it. Until now, the technologies that had been developed to freeze eggs were very inefficient and very few eggs survived to be fertilized later.
A solution to this problem is the vitrification, which consists of cooling the tissues so quickly (-130,000 degrees per minute) that no ice crystals are formed, but a solid similar to glass. When vitrified, liquids remain transparent, unlike when ice is formed, which becomes opaque white.
The Dr. Kuwayama is a pioneer in the implementation of egg and ovarian tissue cryopreservation and a world leader in vitrification. Recently Dr. Kuwayama was in Inser, Medellín, Colombia teaching this technique to 43 embryologists from 4 Latin American countries. He assures that using this technique you can be successful in the survival of the eggs close to 100%. With these percentages, it is already practical for women who need to postpone their fertility to save their eggs to use them later and obtain their pregnancy.
