55-year-old Woman Delivers Twins in India

A 55-year-old woman delivered twin babies at a fertility clinic in the southern Indian city of Chennai. She is perhaps the oldest woman in India to deliver twins.

For a long, long time she had been longing for a child. And menopause had overtaken her. Still she would not give up. She feels doubly rewarded now, literally.

On Monday morning, 55-year-old Brinda became the proud mother of two. Her twins were delivered at a fertility clinic in Chennai, a south Indian city. She is now probably the oldest woman in India to deliver twins.

Both the baby boys, delivered during hour-long caesarean section, and their proud mother are in good health, hospital authorities say.

"Brinda had attained menopause at the age of 45. In normal circumstances, it would have been quite difficult for her to conceive and bear a child," says Dr Jeyarani Kamaraj, gynaecologist and infertility specialist, Chennai.

Brinda, an ex-officer at the Indian Overseas Bank, and her 57-year old husband Alagappan visited the fertility clinic in 2006 with broken hearts and lost hope as they had not children even after twenty-eight years of married life.

"Our investigations proved that the infertility was because of the lack of sufficient number of sperms in Alagappan. But we found Brinda's uterus quite good and healthy," recalls Dr Jeyarani.

A team of specialists under her leadership took the case as a challenge. In November 2006, the team got donor eggs since Brinda had attained menopause. "We used the sperms of Alagappan and an embryo was developed and transferred to Brinda by the Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) process," Dr Jeyarani explains.

"It is the result of the integration of modern medicine and scientific treatment," the gynaecologist explained. What was unique about this surgery was an old woman conceived after attaining menopause to deliver twins, the doctor explained. As Brinda was a diabetic and had developed gestational hypertension and high BP, the team had to plan accurately at every stage for successful delivery of babies, she added.

Till now, the fertility centre has performed more than 200 ICSI processes successfully. The centre also uses a number of advanced technology and treatments like Laser assisted hatching, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, assisted reproductive technique (ART), insemination, micro surgery for tubular repair and a host of other treatments.

Fertility Centre’s medical director Dr T Kamaraj claimed that Brinda was the oldest woman in India to deliver twins. A 59-year old American woman, Lauren Cohen, had given birth to twins in July 2006 through In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) using a donor egg, to be the oldest woman in the world to do so.

Source-Medindia
AK/B