More women turn to egg freezing for pregnancy

More women in the UAE are turning to egg freezing to prolong their fertility life and to have a chance of having a successful pregnancy, explain medical experts.
Preserving fertility is on the rise, and it is not only chosen by women for medical reasons, such as those undergoing cancer treatments, but also by those wishing to delay their fertility due to social or personal reasons.
Dr Monika Chawla, reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at Fakih IVF Fertility Centre in Abu Dhabi, told Khaleej Times that women don't have to rush into marriages or relationships because of their age.
"Egg freezing is now possible, which can stop the biological clock for women," she added.
Dr Chawla pointed out that women in the UAE often fear becoming infertile due to the change in social status, as more women nowadays are marrying at an older age.
"The egg freezing can be done at a much younger age and fertility can be embarked upon when the woman is ready or when she has a partner," she added.
"Women can thus delay their fertility voluntarily in case they haven't found a suitable partner or if their childbearing is getting delayed due to career, job or other aspects of life."
She explained that at a later stage, when the woman is ready, the same eggs can be used, which beats the age-related changes in egg quality.
"Egg freezing has thus evolved as a technology in the last 10 years, due to its optimised success rates," she further explained.
The reason for that is the revised or the optimised technology of vitrification, which is now being applied to the freezing of eggs."
The new technology enables further dehydration of the egg leading to less water retention in the egg, and thus to less damage. On the other hand, the older techniques simply revolved around slow freezing of human eggs.
"Further dehydration, faster freezing enables the technique of vitrification, which enables better survival."
Dr Chawla noted that the survival rates exceed 80 to 85 per cent, whereas older techniques only had around 50 per cent survival rates. Furthermore, with slow freezing as a technology, the pregnancy rate per egg was minimal.
Pregnancy rate with the new technology has a rate of approximately 60 per cent for women under the age of 35, should they have at least eight to 10 eggs frozen.
"Survival rate is one of the aspects of a measure that looks at success. However, the bigger measure is the chance of having a baby eventually.
"We are almost performing over half the number of IVF cycles that we do with the aid of egg freezing."
She noted that a vast majority of the patients at the clinic are having controlled ovarian hyper-stimulation, which makes them produce more eggs. The process utilises medicinal drugs used during IVF treatments to stimulate women's ovaries to produce high egg quantities.
"They prefer to break the cycle by freezing their eggs and then coming back for an embryo transfer at a later date."
The technique also allows the body to recover from all the hormonal stimulation.
Dr Chawla highlighted that chances of pregnancy are based on age and the woman's ovarian reserve.
"If the patient is older, the quality of the eggs can be questioned because of the chromosomal abnormalities within the eggs."
Although technology continues to develop, women should feel somewhat at ease when it comes to prolonging their fertility timeline, and still have a chance in motherhood.
jasmine@khaleejtimes.com

• Abu Dhabi