Australian woman gets pregnant from 27-year-old 'frozen' eggs

Australian researchers have used eggs, which have been kept frozen for 27 years, to get a 43-year-old Melbourne woman pregnant.

It is the country’s first pregnancy using frozen ovarian tissue, the Herald Sun reported.

Monash IVF implanted the tissue into the woman, six years after she beat breast cancer.

Dr Lynn Burmeister removed the woman’s tissue in 2005 before the woman underwent cancer treatment.

Her oncologists gave the all-clear in April for the tissue to be implanted, allowing her to naturally ovulate.

‘‘She’s over the moon, but still very shocked that it has actually happened. I think it’s a bit surreal,’’ the Herald Sun quoted Dr Burmeister as saying.

‘‘She thought she’d die from breast cancer at age 37, but now we’ve used her 27-year-old eggs to get her pregnant at age 43,’’ she stated.

The woman is six and a half weeks pregnant, with a scan on Monday showing the baby’s heart beat.

The Monash IVF team say their technique is superior to others currently on offer in Victoria because they perform a laparotomy, which involves making an incision in the abdominal, rather than endoscopic/laproscopic surgery, which is key hole surgery.

He said the pregnancy was the 20th in the world using ovarian tissue transplants.