Oocyte Cryopreservation: Awareness and Perception of Infertile Couple Undergoing In-Vitro Fertilization

Abstract

Background: Since the In-vitro fertilization law imposed no more than three embryos for a single transfer; oocyte banking has become a current practice in order to avoid the destruction of surplus oocytes and repeated ovarian stimulations. The Oocyte cryopreservation remains a rare practice. The current study aimed to assess the awareness and perceptions of infertile couple undergoing In-Vitro fertilization regarding oocyte cryopreservation. Descriptive cross section design was adopted. A purposive sampling technique was used to recruit 500 infertile couple undergoing IVF at six centers of fertility in Cairo and Giza, Egypt with different category (governmental hospital, private hospital and private centers). Data were collected using structured interviewing questionnaire and couple’s perception towards oocyte cryopreservation. Results: slightly more than half of men and women (54.6% and 62.4%) respectively heard about the oocyte cryopreservation, while (13.8% and 14.4%) of men and women respectively had satisfactory level of knowledge regarding the oocyte cryopreservation. In addition, about less than half of women (46.5%) and less than one third of men (30.4%) had the willing to utilize Cryopreservation services. The most factors affecting women to utilize the oocyte cryopreservation services were long-term risks of the health from the ovarian hyper simulation and egg retrieval process as well as age, while among the men were; save the time, money in the case of failure IVF trail, and current success rates. Also, the study highlighted that, about less than half (43.3%) of the studied women and slightly more than one third (36.6%) of the studied men had positive perception toward the oocyte cryopreservation. Conclusion: most of infertile couples undergoing IVF had unsatisfactory knowledge regarding oocyte cryopreservation, which leads to negative perception about the practice among more than half of the studied subject. Recommendation: couples should be counseling about oocyte cryopreservation, its steps and benefit before starting the cycle of IVF procedure.