Fertility Preservation
The Sims IVF Fertility Preservation Programme gives women and men the opportunity to conceive a child in the future, if their fertility is at risk due to medical illness or they want to proactively preserve fertility for social reasons.
Fertility preservation for medical reasons
The main reason you may need to consider fertility preservation is the risk of damage to your sperm, eggs or ovaries as a result of treatment for a serious medical illness, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. Find out more about emergency medical fertility preservation.
Fertility preservation for social reasons
Women may also consider fertility preservation if they want to have a child later in life and are worried about the effect of age on fertility.
To find out about female fertility preservation options, please book an appointment with a Sims IVF fertility specialist.
What are my fertility preservation options?
Fertility preservation options include freezing eggs for women and sperm freezing for men.
What is egg freezing?
Egg freezing is the process of extracting, freezing and storing a woman's eggs so that they may be used to conceive a child at a later date.
While there are no absolute guarantees, egg freezing does give a woman the opportunity to try for a baby in the future.
What is embryo freezing?
Embryo freezing (cryopreservation) is the process of preserving good quality embryos for future use. When undergoing IVF or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), a woman’s ovaries are stimulated to produce many eggs. Following fertilisation and embryo culture, the best embryos are selected for embryo transfer.
For about 50% of couples, there will also be good embryos which will not be transferred. These embryos can be frozen at this point for future use.
Embryos can be safely stored in liquid nitrogen for extended periods.
What is sperm freezing?
Semen freezing preserves sperm for future use.
It's useful for men who find it difficult to ejaculate on demand and may result in an inability to produce a sample on the day of egg collection. Also, treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy can affect your sperm production. Sometimes this is temporary but in other cases it may be permanent.
We collect samples in a private room in the clinic, so our scientists can prepare and freeze the sperm as soon as possible.
The quality of the semen is reduced after freezing, so if possible, fresh samples are preferred on the day required.
