Hello and welcome!

This is Michael Lee. I am the Director of Laboratories at Fertility Solutions

If you have any questions about vitrification or egg, embryo or blastocysts cryo preservation please ask!

Hello. This is the formal definition of “Vitrification”. The main point is that there is no ice crystal formation – ice is very bad for cells!

Susan,
Thanks for the question. First, vitrification is much faster. It only takes 10 minutes or so to vitrify an embryo whereas with the old “slow freeze” methods it could take about 3 hours. Also, as you can see in my first slide – there is no ice crystal formation with vitrification which helps eggs and embryo survive the process much better

Our pregnancy rates with vitrification are as good as our fresh IVF transfer rates. With the old method of embryo freezing the rates were generally about 10 – 15% less than fresh.

Vitrification isn’t actually that new – Human eggs were vitrified and produced pregnancies as early as 1999. It was first done in mouse embryos in 1985!

If anyone would like to ask a question, please do!

This slide shows the major difference between a vitrification solution and ice crystal formation. This is what happens inside of the cells of eggs and embryos

This is what an oocyte looks like when frozen with the “slow” method. Water moves out and is replaced by cryo protectants. The danger comes when all of the water is not replaced by cryo protectant. The water will freeze and form ice crystals

With vitrification, osmotic shrinkage and the vitrification solutions cause a glass like state to occur, avoiding ice crystal formation

This is what a human egg looks like after it has been vitrified.

This is a vitrified and warmed human blastocysts that has started to hatch from the zona pellucida.

Please call our office and make an appointment with one of our physicians, they would be happy to discuss this with you

We are open from 8AM in the morning

Good evening. Thank you for your questions.