Less than eight per cent of women who freeze their eggs go back to use them, a study found.
Researchers followed up 563 cases of women freezing their eggs between January 2009 and November 2017.
Only 7.6 per cent of women – 43 women – returned to use their eggs, and only one in three of them successfully had a child.
The research was carried out by the Brussels Centre for Reproductive Medicine, one of Europe’s biggest fertility centres.
Dr Michel De Vos, the study leader, told a conference in Barcelona ‘little is known about these social egg freezers and their reproductive outcomes’.
Researchers followed up 563 cases of women freezing their eggs between January 2009 and November 2017
The review of data found that on average women freezing their eggs were 36.5 years old, storing between 8 and 16 eggs.
It found the average age of women coming back to use their frozen eggs was 42.
Commenting on the research, Dr Gillian Lockwood of Midland Fertility Services, a leading UK IVF provider said that the findings ‘reflect what we find in the UK’.
She said: ‘Only a tiny minority of women who have frozen their eggs come back and use them.
‘And fortunately that’s because the vast majority don’t need to. They get pregnant the old fashioned way.’
She added: ‘The overwhelming majority of women who freeze their eggs for non purely medical reasons are doing so because they want the chance to be genetic mothers one day and they aren’t in a relationship where that can happen at the moment.
‘Reassuringly quite a large number of those women do not come back to use those eggs because they do within a relatively short space of time find themselves that relationship.
‘We’re very careful not to suggest that freezing eggs is like buying fire insurance because there’s no guarantee that it’s going to pan out.
‘But many women say they do find it empowering to think they have done something that might help the possibility that they might become genetic mothers one day.’
Nick Macklon, professor of obstetrics at Southampton University said: ‘Many women are using this because they want to wait for Mr Right rather than Mr Alright and maybe what this is telling us is that it works for many of them.
‘Having had the confidence to do that they are finding and getting to the relationship.
‘What we need to understand is to what extent, having had access to this technology, it has empowered them to find the partner they want to settle down with long term. If it is then that’s a very powerful benefit to this treatment.’
The study was presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference today.