Semen freezing is a procedure to freeze and store sperms in an IVF lab. Stored sperms can be frozen for an indefinite time after cryopreservation. Semen freezing is a boon for cancer patients as chemoradiation can lead to complete sterility in healthy 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 a boon for many patients where surgical extraction of sperms from the testis is done ( TESE/ Micro TESE) and the surplus sperms can be used for future fertility purposes. In our IVF labs we routinely freeze one semen sample prior to starting an IVF cycle. This is done as a backup. On the day of the oocyte retrieval, if the husband fails to produce a semen sample due to mental pressure, one can use the frozen sample, with equally good results
