Options on fertility preservation in female cancer patients

Abstract

Infertility following treatment of cancer is a quality of survival's recognized issue and efforts should be made to help young cancer patients retaining their fertility potential. Options to preserve fertility in female patients include well established methods such as shielding to reduce radiation damage to reproductive organs, fertility-sparing surgery and emergency in vitro fertilization after controlled ovarian stimulation, aiming at freezing embryos. Transfer of frozen/thawed embryos today is a clinical routine in fertility clinics worldwide and it has been used for over 25 years. Mature oocytes after ovarian stimulation can also be frozen unfertilized, nevertheless overall pregnancy rates after fertilization of frozen-thawn oocytes are still relatively lower than those with embryo freezing. Remaining fertility preservation options are still in development and include the freezing of immature oocytes aiming at later in vitro maturing and fertilizing them and the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue for future retransplantation or for in vitro growth and maturation of follicles, both still experimental.