- Jiyoung Song: Department of Nursing, Hoseo University, Asan 31499, Republic of Korea.
- Eunwon Lee: Department of Nursing, Doowon Technical University, Ansung 17520, Republic of Korea.
BACKGROUND: With advances in biomedical technology and social changes, such as a high rate of late marriages, the interest in gamete freezing is increasing. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the status of gamete freezing and reproductive health of adult Koreans aged 19-49 years using data from the 2021 National Family and Fertility survey.
METHOD: The SPSS program was used to analyze the data using descriptive statistics, Fisher's Exact -value, and the -test.
RESULTS: Of the 14,040 study subjects, 101 (0.7%) had frozen their gametes. The average age of this group was 38.1 years, 61.4% were women and 38.6% were men. In addition, 83.2% of the group had a university degree or higher, 85.1% lived in urban areas, 94.1% were married, and 66.3% were economically active. The participant-reported incidence of genital infections in this group was 29.7%. The obstetric history revealed that 91.9% of the women considered themselves infertile.
CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study can be used as basic data for developing educational programs to preserve fertility or developing childbirth-related policies in the future.