Experts in the field of reproductive medicine have expressed concern that a new method of freezing eggs which will allow women to postpone motherhood is to be introduced into Ireland as early as next year.
Currently egg-freezing services in Britain and Ireland use a slow-freezing method which has a relatively low success rate and is limited to oncology patients who may be left infertile by their treatment. However, earlier this month, it emerged that two of Britain's leading clinics - Care Fertility and the Bridge Fertility Centre - will begin offering "social egg freezing" services to all women in the coming weeks using a new process called vitrification.
The SIMS International Fertility Clinic, Dublin has since confirmed to The Irish Timesthat it plans to introduce vitrification to Ireland in 2008 in conjunction with Boston IVF, in the US.
Vitrification has been developed in Japan and works by rapidly freezing the egg. Researchers claim that with vitrification eggs have a 90-95 per cent chance of surviving, compared with just 50-60 per cent for eggs frozen using the traditional slow-freeze method.
Pregnancy rates with vitrification are also reported to be as high as 30-40 per cent, which is similar to the pregnancy rates for healthy women conceiving with fresh eggs.
"Egg freezing has been done for some time but the method was never very effective because the eggs would crystallise during the freezing process and were rendered useless," said Dr Anthony Walsh, chairman and medical director of the SIMS Clinic, Dublin. "Over the past few years and 18 months this new method of freezing eggs has proven more successful. There is no crystallisation and babies have been born from it."
Dr Walsh said he believes introducing vitrification will benefit a number of women and could provide a more successful way of freezing the eggs of oncology patients.
If the procedure proves successful, it could also replace frozen embryos, which Dr Walsh describes as being in "a legal limbo" since the recent case of the British woman Natalie Evans who lost a battle to use frozen embryos fertilised by her former partner in the European Court of Human Rights.
"It could also help women who don't have a partner or space in their life for a baby and are voluntarily delaying having a family. Women at the peak of their fertility are now putting their career and education first until they feel they can provide for a baby and this could be important for them," he said.
The Human Assisted Reproduction Ireland (HARI) at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin provides an egg-freezing service to oncology patients using the slow-freeze process. They have not yet had a pregnancy result from frozen eggs but, despite this, Dr Edgar Mocanu, a consultant in reproductive medicine with HARI, said he was reluctant to consider vitrification.
"There is no long-term follow-up on vitrification yet. We do not know how the babies do later on in life. For example, are they more likely to have a malignancy when they're older or will they have fertility problems?" said Dr Mocanu.
"I don't think there is enough evidence to show it's a good idea yet. Everything is still experimental at this stage," he said.
Dr Aongus Nolan, lab director at the University College Hospital Galway Fertility Unit, has also warned against using vitrification as an opportunity to postpone pregnancy. "I would be very nervous about freezing the eggs of a perfectly healthy 28 year old who can have children now but decides to go off for 10 years, live her life and then perhaps discover the eggs didn't survive," he said. "There is more to this than just getting pregnant. The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to carry a pregnancy," Dr Nolan said.
"Socially I don't think it's a good idea either. It's difficult for someone in their 40s to run after a two year old or for someone in their 60s or 70s to have to keep up with a 20 year old. I would advise anyone considering this to tread carefully. It is something I would strongly discourage," he said.