An Emirati woman has recently given birth to the UAE’s first baby conceived from a frozen egg, health officials announced on Wednesday.
The healthy baby boy, weighing 3.3kg, was delivered at the Al Qassimi hospital, Sharjah, after his 40-year-old mother underwent fertility treatment.
“This is a huge development for us,” said Dr Samer Radi, Senior Embryologist and head of the section at Dubai Gynecology and Fertility Center.
“Not only this lady, three other women who used this technique got pregnant and will be delivering their babies in the next few months. We received a 100 percent success rate with all four patients.”
Until recently the frozen egg technique gave only a 2 percent success rate per egg, Dr Radi said. Many doctors were put off and instead chose to use frozen embryos, which has a higher success rate, he said.
“However, the problem with the frozen embryo technique was that it could not be used in certain cases such as for freezing embryos of unmarried females undergoing chemotherapy treatment,” Dr Radi said.
However, recent developments have increased the success rate of the frozen egg technique, which will give more hope to couples undergoing fertility treatment, he said.
