Most eggs frozen by hopeful mothers go unused, Aussie study shows
It's a 'wasted opportunity' as very few end up being donated to research or other prospective parents: authors.
Researchers are decrying a wasted opportunity as thousands of frozen eggs sit unused in storage instead of being used in potentially valuable medical research.
Hopeful mothers froze more than 3000 eggs at Monash IVF clinics across Australia between 2012 and 2021, but the vast majority of them were never removed from storage, Monash University researchers have found.
Their study in Reproductive Biomedicine Online showed the number of patients with eggs in storage grew from 144 in 2012 to more than 2,000 in 2022.
“The number of frozen eggs in storage continues to greatly outpace those that are used in treatment or relinquished from storage — either to be discarded or donated,” said lead researcher Dr Molly Johnston (PhD).
