When Personalized Egg Freezing Means Fewer Injections

Fertility treatment doesn’t have to follow the same protocol for every patient. When multiple approaches are clinically appropriate, an individualized treatment plan can sometimes reduce the burden of treatment without changing the clinical goal.

Personalized Care in Practice

• For Meghan, a second egg freezing cycle offered a clear example of personalized care: a different, clinically appropriate medication approach significantly reduced the number of injections she needed.
• She had frozen her eggs before and assumed her second cycle would look much like the first—monitoring appointments, medications, nightly injections and eventually, an egg retrieval.
• Her physician, Dr. Gayathree Murugappan, determined that a different stimulation approach was appropriate for Meghan.
• The goal hadn’t changed. The path to get there could.

At a Glance

Treatment Goal: Egg Freezing
The Decision: Which stimulation and medication approach was appropriate for this cycle?
What Was Personalized: Dr. Murugappan incorporated oral medications, including Clomid and Provera, into Meghan’s protocol, reducing the number of injectable medications she needed.
Why It Mattered: The approach was clinically appropriate for Meghan while making treatment considerably less burdensome.
Featured Physician: Dr. Gayathree Murugappan

There Is No Single “Best” Fertility Protocol

One of the first questions patients often have about IVF or egg freezing is: Which protocol is best? The answer depends on the patient. Fertility stimulation can be approached in different ways. Physicians consider factors such as ovarian reserve, reproductive history, menstrual cycle and anticipated response when determining which approach is most appropriate. The goal isn’t to make every patient’s protocol different. It’s to make sure the protocol is selected because it makes sense for the individual patient—not simply because it’s the standard approach. For Meghan, that meant her second egg freezing cycle looked different from her first.

What Changed

During a conventional egg freezing cycle, injectable medications are typically used to stimulate the ovaries to develop multiple mature eggs. Another medication is introduced during stimulation to help prevent ovulation before the planned egg retrieval.

For Meghan’s second cycle, Dr. Murugappan incorporated Clomid into her stimulation protocol and used oral Provera rather than an injectable antagonist.

The result was immediately noticeable: fewer injections.

“I started with Clomid instead of Menopur and then Provera as my antagonist, so the number of injections was significantly reduced—and it was awesome.”

Reducing injections wasn’t the clinical objective of Meghan’s treatment. Preserving her fertility was.

The alternative protocol was an option because Dr. Murugappan determined it was an appropriate approach for Meghan. The reduced injection burden was an additional benefit.

When the Treatment Burden Changes

Having been through egg freezing before, Meghan had something many first-time patients don’t: a point of comparison.

During her first cycle, injections became part of the rhythm of every day. She planned around them and anticipated medication time each evening.

With significantly fewer injections during her second cycle, she noticed how much less mental space treatment occupied. There was less anticipation around medication time and less of her day organized around the next injection.

The treatment was still treatment—but it felt lighter.

When there is more than one clinically appropriate way to pursue a patient’s treatment goal, reducing unnecessary treatment burden can be part of individualized care too.

Personalized Medicine, Personalized Experience

Meghan’s experience illustrates two parts of what personalized care means at Spring.

First comes personalized medicine: selecting an evidence-based clinical approach based on the individual patient’s biology, history, goals and circumstances.

Then comes personalized experience: when clinically appropriate options exist, considering how those choices may affect the person actually going through treatment.

Personalization doesn’t mean choosing the easiest protocol at the expense of clinical effectiveness. And it doesn’t mean every patient needs a different or unusual treatment plan.

It means asking:

Of the clinically appropriate approaches available, what makes the most sense for this patient?

For Meghan, the answer happened to make treatment easier too.

Physician Perspective

“One of the most rewarding parts of fertility medicine is that we can tailor treatment to each individual patient. While traditional stimulation protocols remain the best option for many people, there are evidence-based alternatives that may reduce the number of injections for appropriately selected patients. Our goal is never to fit patients into a protocol. It’s to find the protocol that best fits the patient.”

— Dr. Gayathree Murugappan

What Personalized Care Might Look Like for You

Personalized care won’t necessarily mean fewer injections. For another patient, it might mean a different stimulation intensity, adjusting medications based on ovarian response, taking a different approach because of PCOS, choosing between a fresh and frozen embryo transfer, or changing a plan based on what was learned during a previous cycle. The specific decision changes. The principle doesn’t. At Spring Fertility, we don’t believe there is one fertility protocol that’s best for everyone. Our physicians consider the patient in front of them and use their clinical judgment to determine the approach best suited to that individual. Because personalized fertility care isn’t about making everyone’s treatment different. It’s about making every treatment decision with the individual patient in mind.