What happens to frozen embryos when patients don’t want to be found?

Jul 4, 2022

This is a timely episode as the HFEA has just announced a change in the law for the storage of our frozen eggs, embryos, and sperm. From 1 July 2022, all patients can store their eggs, sperm, and embryos for their own treatment for up to 55 years, you just must make sure you provide consent every 10 years.

Frozen Embryos are a topic that I do find quite triggering to be honest, as we didn’t go on to use ours. We donated them to science which is something I have spoken about on this podcast before. They causes a lot of anguish to fertility patients when they don’t know if they can handle more treatment or if they can’t afford it. But it feels so unfair not to hold on to this precious material. But then as the popularity of IVF continues to grow and become more aware of it and have more access to it and sadly need it, there ultimately become more and more embryos in storage. We speak to embryologist Giles Palmer about this issue

What was discussed:

The anguish having frozen embryos has on people
How it feels
Reference to the paper Giles wrote
How each country has its own laws on the storage of embryos
The growing inventory of eggs and sperm around the world and every clinic is talking about
Storage fee that is attached -how that is communicated with the patient
Compassionate transfer
Single embryo transfer, and fertility preservation – all leading to a growing inventory
300% increase in embryos stored over 5 years
If you weren’t pregnant 75% of patients go back for the embryos
If they were pregnant to live birth 16% go back
Giles spoke about how a new Dewer was bought every year – to store the embryos and he had to kn0ck down a wall to store them. The problem for many clinics – problem do they store in-house or off-site at a bio depositary
How to deal with issues when storage time is up
Can’t store samples after consent is up
Paper said 25% of samples – never be used
Embryos are yours to take elsewhere if you want to move them from your clinic
Seed Ships