What is Fertility Preservation?
Fertility preservation is the process of freezing the eggs (oocytes), sperm, embryos or reproductive tissue so that a person can use them to hopefully has their own biological children in the future. Preservation of fertility is possible for men and women.
Ovarian tissue may also be used to prevent infertility, as well as birth defects, associated with advanced maternal age. Advances in medical expertise and technology have provided us with more options than ever to help preserve our patients’ fertility.
Fertility preservation is a sub-specialty within the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, which focuses on helping reproductive-age men and women who are facing cancer treatment and understanding their risks of infertility and possible treatment options.
- Advanced technology has made it possible to freeze life.
- Fertility preservation means to preserve the patient’s ability to reproduce at chosen time.
- Some methods are established and some are emerging.
Who can Fertility Preservation Benefit?
- All cancer patients
- All couples who wants to postpone their family
- If the husband is not available during the procedure.
- severe male factor/ Few sperm.
- Certain problems during the cycle when Embryo transfer is not possible.
How can all be preserved?
1) Semen Sample :
- Routinely preserved and used for donor samples.
- In case of poor quality semen it helps to preserve a better sample / pooled sample.
- Freezed PESA / TESA sample.
- Young cancer patients – pretherapy.
2) Freezing of Embryos :
- Pre-chemotherapy / Pre-radiotherapy in young cancer patients.
- Extra embryos can be frozen for later use.
- In some cases when embryo transfer can not be done- embryos are frozen like: OHSS , Poor Endometrium.
3 . Egg freezing
- Social freezing- when marriage / pregnancy is being delayed for social causes.
- In cancer patients :- Improved cancer management and increase personal rates, advances in ART- oncofertility or fertility preservation is now available.
- In these patients the oncologist briefs the patient about the time in hand and effect of cancer on patients life.
- we can freeze oocytes / sperms embryos or gonadal tissues prior to treatment.
Fertility Preservation Risks
We understand that survival is the primary consideration as the patients get ready to undergo chemotherapy. The Fertility Preservation Program provide information regarding his or her risk of decreased fertility potential after cancer treatment. Chemotherapy or radiation can damage sperm and eggs, but the degree of damage is often hard to predict. For women, one marker of decreased fertility potential after cancer treatment is the loss of menstrual cycles, or the premature menopause. However, some women who still have menstrual cycles after their cancer treatments may have the diminished ovarian reserve. Patients with diminished ovarian reserve may have complexity in conceiving. For men, either the cancer itself or the cancer treatments can causes the infertility problem. Specific cancers that can damages the testes include the testicular cancer and Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Factors that may play a role in future infertility include:
Gender
- Age
- Chemotherapy medications, dose and number of cycles
- Radiation dose and location
- Prior surgeries
- Prior difficulty conceiving
At KJIVF:
we are having a robust vitrification program and our outcome in frozen cycle is as good as compared to best in the world .
To more about our fertility preservation program pl contact our fertility specialists.