Semen Freezing

Semen freezing is a procedure to freeze and store sperms in an IVF lab. Frozen sperms can be stored for an indefinite time after cryopreservation. Semen freezing is a boon for cancer patients as chemoradiation can lead to complete sterility in such males. Before any cancer treatment males can store their sperms and utilize them once the cancer treatment is over. Other cases where semen cryopreservation helps is in ART cases where husbands are travelling and it is difficult to time the wife’s ovulation. It is also used in many patients where surgical extraction of sperms from the testis is done ( TESE/ Micro TESE) and the extra sperms can be cryopreserved and later be used for future fertility purposes. In our IVF labs we routinely freeze one semen sample as a backup prior to starting an IVF cycle. On the day of the oocyte retrieval, in case husband fails to produce a semen sample due to mental pressure, one can use the frozen sample, which gives equally good results