Fertility Preservation

Whether it is for social or medical reasons, fertility preservation is becoming a very important component of fertility management worldwide.

Male and female patients mainly seek fertility preservation techniques before undergoing cancer treatments that are known to be very toxic for the eggs or the sperm. On the other hand, advanced maternal age is known to lead to a decrease in the number and the quality of the oocytes and some women who are approaching their late 30s and haven’t planned for their families yet, decide to freeze their eggs in order to preserve some of them.

The laboratory in Azoury IVF Clinic is equipped with one of the best cryo-preservation facilities in Lebanon and a trained team that can handle all types of male and female fertility preservation.
 Vitrification, which has been proven to be the most efficient freezing technique, is our technique of choice and we use it to freeze sperm, oocytes, ovarian tissue and embryos.

Male fertility preservation

Sperm freezing is the most common male fertility preservation technique. It has been established many years ago and even though it has its limitations, it is a relatively very easy and accessible technique and we have been successfully performing it since the establishment of Azoury IVF CLinic. 

The efficiency of sperm freezing depends on the initial quality of the sperm and if the frozen sample is of good quality, it is practically sure that we will recover a good quality sample after thawing. The worse the sperm before freezing, the trickier it becomes to recover viable and motile sperm.

 Once it has been frozen, sperm can remain in this state for years and its quality remains stable. The quality of the frozen sample does not decrease with time.
 Depending on its quality, the thawed sperm sample can be used for Intra-Uterine Insemination (IUI), conventional In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) or Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI).

Female fertility preservation

For years, female fertility preservation was very difficult to achieve and its efficiency remained very questionable. It is only very recently that oocyte freezing has become possible. As for the sperm, the efficiency of egg freezing depends greatly on the initial quality of the eggs. Freezing duration does not impact oocyte quality. 

Couple fertility preservation

Embryo freezing has been very well established for years and in addition to fertility preservation, it is commonly used in the following cases:

- In case of excess embryos obtained during an IVF cycle

- In case of bad endometrium quality that renders embryo transfer impossible

- In case of genetic testing on the embryos that requires some time to be performed.

As for the sperm and eggs, the efficiency of embryo freezing depends greatly on the initial quality of the embryo and freezing duration does not impact embryo quality.