Egg freezing facility available at Kasturba Hospital in Manipal

The Manipal Kasturba Hospital now has a facility for women to freeze their eggs, which allows them to preserve their fertility.

Speaking to media persons here, Manipal Assisted Reproduction Centre (MARC) Clinical Head of the team Dr Pratap Kumar said freezing eggs is now accepted worldwide, allowing women to preserve their fertility.

This technology is particularly helpful for women experiencing premature menopause. Women are increasingly delaying motherhood due to various reasons, but their biological clock keeps ticking. They can now think of having children using donated frozen eggs, Dr Kumar added.

He said the Manipal Assisted Reproduction Centre, popularly known as MARC at Kasturba Hospital, Manipal, was successful in freezing eggs about a year ago. A childless couple approached the centre in 2014 and doctors at MARC found that she was suffering from ovarian failure and could not produce her own eggs. Hence, frozen eggs from a donor were used to create embryos through IVF technology and later transferred into the patient’s womb. Recently she delivered healthy twins, he said.

He said recent decades have seen a dramatic change in fertility treatments. When Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, was born in 1978, the idea of fertilising human eggs in a laboratory was controversial. Now, this technology is considered a routine and safe treatment rather than a revolutionary advance.

Egg freezing technology will benefit many couples who would like to delay their pregnancy and also for patients who have premature menopause. There is a 40 to 60 per cent success rate and the expenses would be somewhere around Rs 17,000, he added.

Chief Embryologist Dr Satish Adiga said egg freezing was almost impossible till recent years. Now, it should no longer be considered “experimental” because of the new success using vitrification technology, he observed.
MARC has been treating infertile couples since 1990, with its success getting better as the centre is equipped with state-of-the art technology and trained professionals.