A boy is the first Maltese baby born through in-vitro fertilisation using frozen eggs, St James Hospital said.
The healthy child was born this week, nine months after the delicate procedure to thaw the eggs and fertilise them was conducted at the private hospital.
Laboratory director Paul Sultana said the mother underwent IVF for the first time in July last year.
The procedure had failed to produce a pregnancy but two extra eggs produced during the hormone stimulation process at the time were frozen: the law only allows doctors to fertilise two eggs with any extra ones being frozen.
In November the mother underwent the second IVF process using the frozen eggs.
This was the first time that the hospital performed the procedure using frozen eggs, according to Dr Sultana.
He explained this meant that the mother saved money and avoided the uncomfortable and painful stimulation process a second time.
The eggs were thawed and the husband’s fresh sperm was injected into them – a process known as ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection).
“This produced two perfect embryos that when transferred to the mother’s womb led to a single successful pregnancy and finally the birth of a healthy baby boy,” Dr Sultana said.
It was a big satisfaction for all
Josie Muscat, owner of St James Hospital, said the mother was very happy with the result. “It was a big satisfaction for her and us.”
He said another six mothers got pregnant from the IVF process using frozen eggs.
They were expecting to give birth in the coming months.
“Egg freezing is proving to be as successful as embryo freezing,” Dr Muscat said, thanking Italian doctor Eleonora Porcu, who helped St James gear up for egg freezing.
Dr Porcu, an advocate of egg freezing as an alternative to the ethically contentious embryo freezing, helped train St James’s doctors at her specialised clinic in Bologna.
She had been in Malta during the debate in the run-up to Parliament’s approval of a law regulating IVF in 2012.
Maltese law does not allow embryo freezing and limits fertilisation to two eggs.
St James pioneered IVF in Malta two decades ago but egg freezing only started being practised last year.