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

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.