IVF clinics ‘sell false hope’ by freezing eggs of women aged 48
As studies show success rate is less than 5% past age of 44...
FERTILITY clinics have been accused of selling ‘false hope’ to women by allowing them to freeze their eggs up to the age of 48.
This is despite fewer than 5 per cent of women have an IVF baby with their own eggs past the age of 44 – and the fertility regulator warning that women over 40 have a ‘very slim’ chance of falling pregnant after freezing their eggs.
Vast numbers of middle-aged women are freezing their eggs, amid concerns the fashionable procedure is seen as a ‘back-up plan’.
Egg-freezing cycles have more than quadrupled since 2010, despite a price tag of up to £8,200.
The freezing is sold as ‘fertility insurance’, which buys women more time to get ahead in their career or find the right partner before starting a family. It allows women to freeze their eggs when they are younger and better quality, to give them a better chance of falling pregnant at a later date.
The new report from fertility regulator the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) reveals that 46 per cent of women freezing their eggs are single and have no partner.
The regulator says women may have ‘unrealistically high expectations of success’. Its report states: ‘Where women over the age of 40 are freezing their eggs, the likelihood of a pregnancy from these eggs would be very slim, and we would caution against this being a sensible option for this group of women.’
HFEA figures show women trying to have a baby past the age of 44, using their own eggs and donor sperm, have a birth rate of less than 5 per cent.
Richard Anderson, professor of clinical reproductive science at the University of Edinburgh, said: ‘The chances of having a baby from egg-freezing in a woman’s late 40s are very slim and clinics need to be clear that they are acting in a responsible manner.
‘It is difficult to see how someone freezing their eggs close to their 50th birthday is advisable, and it is absolutely essential that women doing so have full knowledge of the likely success rates.’
Aileen Feeney, chief executive of leading patient charity Fertility Network, said: ‘By 28, female fertility has already begun to fall, at 35 female fertility plummets and at 42 your chance of becoming a biological mother is vanishingly small. Women should not be given false hope about their chances of success in their mid to late 40s using their own eggs.’
Fewer than one in five women who try to have a baby using their own frozen eggs are able to do so, with a success rate of only 18 per cent per cycle.
HFEA says the ‘optimum time’ to freeze your eggs is during a woman’s 20s and early 30s, but the 2016 figures show almost one in five egg-freezing cycles were for women aged 40 and over.
Almost four in five women who have their eggs frozen live in London, and the two clinics which froze the most eggs of women in their 40s in 2016 are London Women’s Clinic and London-based Boston Place. HFEA says clinics have an ‘ethical responsibility’ to be clear that egg-freezing below the age of 35 gives women the best chance of starting a family.
A Daily Mail investigation last year caught doctors making wildly optimistic claims for egg-freezing, such as a 30 per cent chance of having a baby with frozen eggs at the age of 38.
Sarah Norcross, director of the fertility charity Progress Educational Trust, said: ‘It is shocking to learn of women in their late 40s having their eggs frozen, when their chances of success will be all but negligible. People say that egg-freezing empowers women, and perhaps it can, but a woman of 48 is being sold false hope.’
But Professor Nick Macklon, of London Women’s Clinic, said eggfreezing had been ‘transformed’ by new techniques, adding: ‘Women might be able to partially counter the biological clock that means most will be infertile by the age of 45.’
Boston Place said: ‘We treat every individual case on its own merit.’