McGill University Health Center (MUHC) in Montreal yesterday announced the first successful birth in Canada resulting from frozen eggs. A healthy baby boy, weighing 3740 grams was born on April 29 to a 26-year-old mother who had suffered from infertility for two years.
Professor Seang Lin Tan, Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McGill University and Director of the McGill Reproductive Centre at the MUHC in Montreal, who led the team says they are the first in-vitro fertilization (IVF) Centre in Canada to achieve this success, which is fantastic news for both the family and for fertility health research.
The mother, a patient of the McGill Reproductive Centre, had initially planned to undergo treatment with ovarian stimulation and intra-uterine insemination (IUI), but because she produced too many follicles in her ovaries, the treatment cycle had to be cancelled because of a high risk of multiple-fetal pregnancy. As an alternative treatment, eggs were collected from her ovaries, and then frozen in liquid nitrogen at -196ºC. After a period of two months, the eggs were thawed and fertilized with her partner's sperm through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and the resulting embryos implanted in her uterus.
Dr. William Buckett, the MUHC physician who looked after the mother during the pregnancy, says the mother had an uncomplicated full-term pregnancy and straightforward delivery. The parents, who remain anonymous, described the procedure as easy and uncomplicated.
McGill Reproductive Centre are pioneers in a revolutionary new rapid freezing technique called vitrification, which has dramatically increased egg survival rate. Because human eggs are very fragile and have high water content conventional methods of freezing have been relatively unsuccessful because they allow the formation of ice crystals, which damages the cells and makes the egg unusable.