The managing director of Nordica Fertility Centre, Dr. Abayomi Ajayi, has underscored egg freezing as option women with chronic medical conditions can explore for fertility. She made this known at the eighth anniversary celebration of the Nordica Fertility Clinic in Abuja, saying chronic medical conditions like cancer and endometriosis which require chemotherapy and surgery may have great impact on fertility.
“For instance, findings from a study titled: ‘Fertility preservation in women with endometriosis’ shows that infertility affects about 30 to 50 per cent of women with endometriosis due to the pathophysiology of the disease and iatrogenic injury resulting from surgical intervention.
“Infertility is a major cause of morbidity in women with endometriosis. 30 to 50 per cent of endometriosis patients face infertility, and the condition reduces fecundity from 15 per cent to 20 per cent per month in healthy women to 2 per cent to 5 per cent per month in women with endometriosis,” she said. The fertility expert recommended egg freezing as the best option for this set of women as it will help them complete their family, after undergoing treatments.
“Also, women with no immediate pregnancy desire due to career, school or not ready for marriage can go for egg freezing. “The reason for that is because, a woman has her best eggs when she is younger and her fertility starts to decline at 32 years.
It becomes difficult for women to conceive after 38 as her chances of getting pregnant becomes gloomy due to the quality of her eggs, and the incidence of having children with abnormalities is higher when a woman gets pregnant at age 38.
“Egg freezing can reverse those changes when it is frozen at an early age. When a woman is already 32 and she has no partner or she is not ready to have a baby yet, she can go for egg freezing. It can be done from any age from 32 years.
“Anytime she decides to have children, be it 10 years or more, the egg will still be viable as it was before frozen and the incidence of abnormalities in babies are lower with egg freezing. For it to be realistic, nothing less than 15 eggs should be stored,”
