Institute for Women's Health, UCL, 84-96 Chenies MewsBloomsbury, London WC1E 6HU, UK.
London Women's Clinic, 113-115 Harley Street, London W1PG 6AP, UK.
Reprod Biomed Online. 2019 Feb;38(2):272-282. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2018.11.003. Epub 2018 Dec 11.
What can we learn from 5 years of egg-freezing practice in the UK? What are the different categories of egg freezing, and what are the social and demographic characteristics of patients, and their decisions regarding subsequent storage or thawing?
A retrospective analysis of clinical and laboratory data of all 514 cycles of 'own' egg freezing conducted at the London Women's Clinic in the 5-year period from the start of 2012 to the end of 2016.
This analysis, the first of its kind, develops a clearer picture of egg-freezing trends in the UK and fills in the details behind the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's national figures. Four different categories of egg freezing are identified and the appropriate category allocated to each of the 514 cycles undertaken by 352 patients. To the established categories of 'medical' and 'social' already discussed in the literature, we add the two new categories of 'clinical' and 'incidental' egg freezing. We show how each of these categories presents a distinct egg-freezing patient profile, and discuss the similarities and differences between them across variables such as age, relationship status, number of eggs frozen, number of egg-freezing cycles undertaken, and the current status of frozen eggs.
The data require a reconceptualization of the phenomenon of egg freezing, and argue for the importance of clearly and accurately differentiating between different categories of egg-freezing practice in clinical and national data collection in order to adequately inform future practice, regulation and the decision-making processes of patients considering these procedures.
我们能从英国 5 年的卵子冷冻实践中学到什么？卵子冷冻有哪些不同类别，患者的社会人口学特征及其随后的存储或解冻决定是什么？
对 2012 年初至 2016 年底的 5 年期间伦敦妇女诊所进行的 514 个“自身”卵子冷冻周期的临床和实验室数据进行回顾性分析。
这种分析首次更清晰地描绘了英国卵子冷冻的趋势，并填补了人类受精和胚胎学管理局全国数据背后的细节。确定了卵子冷冻的四个不同类别，并将 352 名患者进行的 514 个周期中的每一个分配到适当的类别中。除了文献中已经讨论过的“医学”和“社会”类别外，我们还增加了“临床”和“偶然”卵子冷冻这两个新类别。我们展示了这些类别中的每一个如何呈现出不同的卵子冷冻患者特征，并讨论了它们在年龄、关系状况、冷冻卵子数量、卵子冷冻周期数量以及冷冻卵子的当前状况等变量方面的相似性和差异。
这些数据需要重新概念化卵子冷冻现象，并主张在临床和国家数据收集时清楚准确地区分不同类别的卵子冷冻实践的重要性，以便为未来的实践、监管和考虑这些程序的患者的决策过程提供充分信息。
