JBRA Assisted Reproduction 2025;29(Suppl.2 SBRA 2025):127
Poster Presentation
29^th Annual Congress of the SBRA. São Paulo/SP - Brazil, 2025
doi: 10.5935/1518-0557.20263761

P-115. Growth Trends in Oocyte Cryopreservation for Fertility Preservation

Caroline Christina Varela Brogliato¹, Nathalia Yamamoto Alonso¹, Fernanda Fazzoni Souza¹, Karla Pacheco Melo¹, Ivan Henrique Yoshida¹, Michelli Suemi Tanada¹, Emerson Barchi Cordts¹, Caio Parente Barbosa¹

¹ Instituto Ideia Fértil de Saúde Reprodutiva - São Paulo - SP - Brasil

Objective: The present study aimed to evaluate the number of patients who underwent oocyte cryopreservation for fertility preservation in the past five years and to assess those who returned to undergo assisted reproduction treatment using their cryopreserved oocytes. Results were analyzed from cycles between January 2020 and December 2024.
Methods: This retrospective study included 11,633 patients who underwent oocyte retrieval between January 2020 and December 2024 at a private fertility clinic in São Paulo, Brazil. Among these, 859 used the oocyte cryopreservation technique, totaling 12,823 cryopreserved oocytes. Over the five-year period, 199 patients underwent oocyte thawing for in vitro fertilization. Fertility preservation rates were analyzed over the years, considering the proportion of patients who opted for fertility preservation relative to the total number of oocyte retrievals performed in the same period. Qualitative variables were expressed as absolute and relative frequencies and compared using the Chi-square test. Quantitative variables were expressed as meanąstandard deviation with 95% confidence intervals and analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test. For all analyses, the significance level was set at p<0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using Jamovi software, version 2.5.
Results: A decrease in the mean age of patients seeking assisted reproduction services was observed in 2021 vs. 2024 (37.4 vs. 36.1 years; p=0.004) and in 2022 vs. 2024 (37.2 vs. 36.1 years; p=0.002). There was also an increase in the proportion of oocyte retrievals for fertility preservation (from 1% in 2020 to 21% in 2024) and in the mean number of cryopreserved oocytes per patient (from 7.1 to 8.5; p=0.014). Regarding patients who returned for oocyte thawing, the highest proportion was from the year 2020, representing 69% of cases cryopreserved that year, compared with 55% in 2021, 49% in 2022, 30% in 2023, and 9% in 2024 (p<0.001).
Conclusion: There was a significant increase in oocyte retrievals as a fertility preservation strategy. This growth reflects a broader dissemination of information about the procedure, younger patients seeking assisted reproduction services and changes in the social behavior of women. This increase marks an important milestone in female reproductive autonomy, redefining the concept of biological time, expanding the possibilities for reproductive choice and motherhood planning. Notably, most oocytes cryopreserved in recent years remain in storage.