First baby born in UAE and Gulf region through frozen-egg technique -UPDATED
The baby body is healthy and weights 3.30 kg. His Emirati mother, 40 years, had been undergoing infertility treatment at the Dubai Gynecology and Fertility Center This delivery gives a huge boost to the frozen egg technique which was previously known to have a very poor success rate.
Mr Samer Radi, Senior Embryologist and head of the section at Dubai Gynecology and Fertility Center, DHA said, "This is a huge development for us.
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% success rate with all four patients." Dr Radi said that until recently the frozen egg technique only gave a 2% success rate per oocyte and this dissuaded doctors from around the world to use this form of treatment. Instead, doctors substituted this technique with freezing embryos which was known to have a higher success rate.
"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." said Dr Radi.
He said all this changed with the recent development in the frozen egg technique which drastically improved the success rate and gave hope to many couples dealing with infertility "The vitrification technique made all the difference and after implementing it we have seen the success with the frozen egg technique. Basically this method for freezing eggs ensures the eggs and its surrounding area is protected, no ice formation takes place so the chances of damage to the oocyte are drastically reduced." Dr Radi thanked the higher management and DHA for their support.
WAM/TF