Social egg freezing: risk, benefits and other considerations

Angel Petropanagos; Alana Cattapan; Françoise Baylis; Arthur Leader

doi:10.1503/cmaj.141605

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Re: Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Angel Petropanagos

Posted on: 01 February 2016
Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Christopher W Barbey

Posted on: 15 January 2016
The association between the transfer of embryos derived from frozen oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 years of age
Miyako Funabiki

Posted on: 03 June 2015

Posted on: (1 February 2016)
Page navigation anchor for Re: Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Re: Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Angel Petropanagos, Postdoctoral Fellow
Other Contributors:
We thank Christopher W. Barbey for his engagement with our article, "Social egg freezing: risks, benefits and other considerations." Our intention was not to mislead readers. We did provide information in the preceding sentences that clearly indicates that we were discussing the live birth rate "per vitrified and thawed oocyte." Restating that the live birth rate in question was "per vitrified and thawed oocyte" might hav...
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We thank Christopher W. Barbey for his engagement with our article, "Social egg freezing: risks, benefits and other considerations." Our intention was not to mislead readers. We did provide information in the preceding sentences that clearly indicates that we were discussing the live birth rate "per vitrified and thawed oocyte." Restating that the live birth rate in question was "per vitrified and thawed oocyte" might have ensured greater clarity. In our estimation, however, if read in context the nature of the original claim would be apparent to most readers.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.
Posted on: (15 January 2016)
Page navigation anchor for Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Potentially Misleading Representation of Live Birth Rate
Christopher W Barbey, MA Candidate
At the bottom of the first page the authors state, "the ASRM estimates that the live birth rate is 2%-12% for women under 38 years of age." This is not exactly what the ASRM estimates in the current version of the cited source. The current version of the source states, "the chance that one frozen egg will yield a baby in the future is ar...
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At the bottom of the first page the authors state, "the ASRM estimates that the live birth rate is 2%-12% for women under 38 years of age." This is not exactly what the ASRM estimates in the current version of the cited source. The current version of the source states, "the chance that one frozen egg will yield a baby in the future is around 2-12%."
By not specifying that they are referring to "live birth rate per frozen oocyte" the CMAJ authors may give the impression that the likelihood of an individual woman giving birth to a child after oocyte cryopreservation is much lower than what it might actually be (what it is is unclear). It is easy to think the phrase "the live birth rate is 2%-12% for women under 38" means that if a woman under 38 undergoes egg retrieval and has her eggs vitrified, she has a 2- 12% change of having a child with those eggs later on. This is not what the ASRM meant.
This ambiguity may misrepresent the balance of risks and benefits in social egg freezing. I believe this is a significant ambiguity given that the paper's focus is to enumerate the risks and benefits of social egg freezing.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.
Posted on: (3 June 2015)
Page navigation anchor for The association between the transfer of embryos derived from frozen oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 years of age
The association between the transfer of embryos derived from frozen oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 years of age
Miyako Funabiki, MD.
Other Contributors:
We read the manuscript by Petropanagos et al. 1 with interest. In our clinic, we carried out a prospective study to determine the association between the transfer of embryos derived from frozen oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 years of age (n=3; mean age of 44.3 years). We found that the clinical pregnancy rate per embryo transfer of frozen oocyte-derived embryos was 20%. Furthermore, we also prospecti...
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We read the manuscript by Petropanagos et al. 1 with interest. In our clinic, we carried out a prospective study to determine the association between the transfer of embryos derived from frozen oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 years of age (n=3; mean age of 44.3 years). We found that the clinical pregnancy rate per embryo transfer of frozen oocyte-derived embryos was 20%. Furthermore, we also prospectively studied the association between the transfer of embryos derived from fresh oocytes and clinical pregnancy rate in women over 40 (n=163; mean age of 41.3 years) and found that the clinical pregnancy rate per transfer of these embryos was 17 %. Moreover, the data of the registered study (UMIN000015059) was used in these studies. As a result, there was no significant difference in age (P=0.06) or in the clinical pregnancy rate (P=1.0) between the two studies. In addition, multivariate analysis indicated that the clinical pregnancy rate was not influenced by the number of embryos transferred (P=0.76) or by whether the egg had been frozen (P=0.64). Thus, we concluded that freezing eggs did not negatively affect the clinical pregnancy rate at our clinic in women over 40 years of age. However, the clinical outcome for human eggs frozen for a longer period of time remains unclear. Therefore physicians should discuss risk and benefits of egg freezing with women 1.
Reference
1. Petropanagos A, Cattapan A, Baylis F, Leader A. Social egg freezing: risk, benefits and other considerations. CMAJ 2015; pii: cmaj.141605.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.