It’s been a long-held belief that fresh embryos have a greater chance of resulting in a pregnancy than frozen ones, but new research is turning this theory on its head.

The research shows that frozen embryos have as much chance of producing a baby as fresh embryos.

The findings, recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, show that pregnancy rates and live births were equal in a group of women implanted with frozen embryos and those implanted with fresh embryos.

The research was carried out by teams from The University of Adelaide and Vietnam’s University of Medicine and Pharmacy and My Duc Hospital.

The participants were divided into two groups – those using a fresh embryo and those using frozen embryos. The rates of live birth after the first embryo transfer were 34 per cent in the frozen embryo group, and 32 per cent in the fresh embryo group.

The key finding is that freezing embryos for IVF does not harm a couple’s chances of having a baby.

However, freezing embryos does have disadvantages – one being that the freezing process adds additional costs in IVF.