A 54-year-old Greek woman has given birth to a baby girl using an embryo that had been frozen for more than 22 years, in a race against Greece’s age limit for IVF treatment. Cristina Rapti-Tzelepi and her husband, Constantinos Raptis, 60, decided to try for another child several months after their 21-year-old son, Giorgos, died in a road accident last October.
The Greek case has also reignited discussion around the country’s age restrictions on IVF.
Kostas Pantos, Rapti-Tzelepi’s gynaecologist and head of the Hellenic Society of Reproductive Medicine, said the rules may need to be reconsidered, particularly as Greece faces a declining birth rate.
Since Rapti-Tzelepi was approaching the age limit, the couple had to obtain approval from the country’s national reproductive medicine authority. However, they were up against Greece’s rules, which generally prevent women over the age of 54 from undergoing IVF. Rapti-Tzelepi eventually gave birth to a baby girl at a hospital in Athens on Wednesday, September 9. The newborn weighed 3.49 kg.
The couple chose to use one of the embryos they had previously had cryopreserved.
