Going For ICSI. Can Sperm Be Refrozen? Will They Retrieve The Eggs?

Posted on Fri, 9 Aug 2013

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Fri, 9 Aug 2013 Answered on

Fri, 30 Aug 2013 Last reviewed on

Question : My dh only has 1 load of frozen sperm . I am 30 prob 32 when implant. We r going to do icsi. Can they refreeze the sperm so we can use again. Will they even retrieve my eggs with only 1 load of frozen sperm???

Answered by Dr. Chetna Jain (52 minutes later)

eggs can be retrieved with only one load of sperms because icsi can be undertaken with few sperms. normally after thawing the whole sample gets used. if there is sufficient load it can be freezed again. a sample can be repeatedly frozen and thawed. with each thaw the yield of motile vital sperms reduces but is sufficient to perform ICSI in ART cycles

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar

Follow up: Dr. Chetna Jain (15 hours later)

Would it make more sense to freeze a round of eggs. Then retrieve more eggs and fertilize them all and then freeze double the amount of embryos or is that not the way it works? Can u defrost eggs and fertilize and then refreeze embryo or better to just defrost and freeze sperm multiple times?

Answered by Dr. Chetna Jain (33 hours later)

as per current practice storing eggs is very uncommon and gives very poor results. repeated defreezing semen will make the yield of sperms less hence it makes sense to restore semen and freeze embryos to optimise the success of IVF. so it's better to have excess embryos frozen and keep semen frozen. try with fresh embryos first then next frozen embryos and then if required defreeze semen . hope you will not need these many attempts

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar