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What are the main groups of patients for fertility preservation?

10 fertility expert(s) answered this question

Answer from: Maria José Mendiola, MD, MSc in Human Genetics, MSc in Science Communication, ObGyn

Gynaecologist, Gynaecologist in Reproductive Medicine & Reproductive Genetics
Clínica Monterrico
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First, we should know that fertility preservation is the general term used to describe treatment options that give patients an opportunity to have a child at a later time. It is useful when patients are faced with a risk of losing their fertility so common reasons why people may choose to consider fertility preservation. Reason one could be if the patient will undergo a treatment, for example, chemotherapy that could imply an urgent fertility preservation so in this way oocytes can be frozen before the required treatment which can affect the quantity and quality of the eggs. On the other hand, reason two, we have a patient that would undergo radiation so that is why emergency cryopreservation of eggs would be ideal. Another reason (number 3) is if the patient would undergo surgery for an oncological condition or a gynecological condition that affects the ovarian reserve. Reason 4, I think that there are patients who may have genetic conditions that can decrease fertility, on the other hand, there are other conditions of a genetic nature which do not imply fertility problems but a had problem in the offspring could be observed in the future so that is why advice is provided to reduce risk through implantation genetic status. Reason 5, if the patient wants to cryopreserve their gametes for social reasons and patients wish to have biological children in the future when conditions due to age could be less probable.

Answer from: Andrew Thomson, FRCPath

Embryologist, Consultant Clinical Embryologist & Laboratory Manager
Centre for Reproduction and Gynaecology Wales (CRGW)
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It varies depending on the location in the country. The NHS trusts will have various third-party agreements with different clinics and it just depends which NHS trust has that affiliation with each different clinic but there is an increasing awareness of it. That’s sadly underutilised service but anyone going through chemotherapy or even sort of any treatment that may affect their fertility (such as removal of a testicle). This should ideally be sperm banking prior to any medical treatment and some patients do come back and use it. Not a huge amount but we recommend after they finish all the treatment, they have another semen analysis 12 months after they finish the treatment just to assess their fertility levels and it’s just a good way of – like women egg banking, sperm banking is a way of fertility preservation particularly for medical reasons. So it’s a really good system that should be more advertised and utilised.

Answer from: Alexia Chatziparasidou,  MSc, PMI-RMP

Embryologist, Consultant Clinical Embryologist, Director of Embryolab Academy, Co-Founder of Embryolab Fertility Clinic
Embryolab Fertility Clinic
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All young people that may have experience medical conditions such as endometriosis or autoimmune disease or cancer – all of the in case of women or cancer or autoimmune disease in case of men, in all these medical conditions their fertility may be threatened due to the medical regime that they need to follow or the intervention that they need to undergo. So, for these people the science today has developed fertility preservation options and they now are able to preserve their fertility and safeguard it in an attempt to allow time for their bodies to recover, to deal with the disease and once the body is fully recovered to be able to use these eggs or sperm with good chances to achieve a pregnancy. However, over the last few years, we have a new social phenomenon where both women and men postpone their family planning for later in life. We do know that the age, the advanced age may have a severe impact on the quality of both oocytes and sperm and this is the reason why there is now an increasing number of young people who resort to fertility preservation procedures in order to be able to preserve their fertility and postpone in a safe way their family planning for later in life.

Answer from: Melvin H. Thornton, Associate Professor

Gynaecologist, Medical Director & IVF Director
Global Fertility & Genetics
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The main groups of patients for fertility preservation are both men and women, single men and women, or men and women in relationships, and gay relationships, gay men, lesbian women, but also for people undergoing transitioning. Transgender who are transitioning is important for them to undergo fertility preservation before they completely transition either surgically or medically. So it’s for everyone. It previously was designed for people who were diagnosed with cancer and going to undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy or some type of surgical sterilization. But now it’s designed for everyone just to preserve their fertility for future uses, preserve their fertility before cancer treatment, and preserve their fertility before they transition.

Answer from: Apostolos Georgiannakis, M.Sc., Ph.D

Andrologist, Sperm Quality Specialist
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The main groups of man that could decide to preserve sperm can be because of their lifestyle, their profession or if they do any drug abuse or alcohol abuse, if they don’t want children at this age but they might be thinking conceiving later on in life when they are older but they do not know if they will be able to conceive – so they can store sperm. It can be for social reasons as we call it – someone is storing sperm just to be on the safe side, that he has gametes stored, in case he cannot conceive naturally. It can also be cancer patients who are just being diagnosed with cancer and they are about to start their medical intervention which can be a surgery or radio-chemotherapy. It can also be patients who have low sperm counts already and they have, as we call it, declining semen quality and for this reason they want to store the sperm in case they in a few years time or few months time, they don’t have any sperm at all in their ejaculate.

Answer from: Ioannis Zervomanolakis, PhD

Gynaecologist, Obstetrician
Hygeia IVF Athens
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The main group of patients that are interested in fertility preservation is, of course, two groups. The first group consists of women with cancer, that are faced with this diagnosis and have to find a way in order to make sure that they can get their children later. The other group that is getting bigger and bigger nowadays are women with careers or women without a relationship that decide to undergo fertility treatment in terms of egg freezing because they want to make sure that they will have oocytes when they decide to have their own family either through a later partnership or so-called single motherhood.

Answer from: Ahmed Amer, DipRCPath, MBA, MSc, MEng

Embryologist, Senior Embryologist
ARGC Limited
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The main group of patients that benefit from fertility preservations are those undergoing medical treatments as cancer treatment where the damage to one’s fertility can be irreversible. Fertility preservation gives them the option of having their own genetic offspring in the future. Additionally another group of patients that may benefit from fertility preservations or those patients that just are not ready to have a baby right now or at this point in life and they want to have some kind of assurance or at least have some options of having their own genetic offspring in the future when they feel that they’re more ready.

Answer from: Jessica Subira, M.D. Consultant in Gynecology, Sub-specialist in Reproductive Medicine

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We can classify fertility preservation in mainly two groups. The first one would be what we call social fertility preservation and that would be the option for women that want to postpone their motherhood and they want to get pregnant later on when we know that chances of having a natural pregnancy will decline because of the loss of oocyte quality and that would be the first group of patients. We also have what we call medical fertility preservation and then we have two different groups: oncological patients for whom we have to provide this tool because they are gonna face the treatment that probably will be harmful for the ovaries or the sperm and then we have also fertility preservation options for benign diseases such as for example ovarian surgeries, endometriosis or even benign autoimmune diseases that do not respond to to conventional treatment.

Answer from: Bárbara Silvera Gijón, Embriologist

Embryologist, Embriologist
Quirónsalud Valencia
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The groups that go to preserve their fertility are wide, from women and men without a partner, patients diagnosed with cancer and have to undergo chemotherapy or some sterilising treatment, and trans people who are in a period of transition and before they go either surgically or medically transition and they want to preserve their cells for the future.

Answer from: Alicia Tio Castro

Embryologist, Fertility navigator
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Different groups can benefit from fertility preservation. One of them is people going through cancer treatment. Those patients can preserve the fertility before starting the cancer treatment, before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy because those treatments will destroy their gametes, so preserving those gametes before starting the treatment will ensure that they will be able to have kids in the future when they pass the treatment.
Another group that can benefit from fertility preservation is people suffering from some disease that can affect fertility such as, for example, endometriosis. Endometriosis is a condition that can affect the ovaries and also eggs, the quality of the eggs and sometimes the disease require a procedure to remove the plaques, the endometriotic plaques and that procedure can also affect the tissue, the ovaries tissue, so by preserving the eggs, they will be able to have kids in the future.
Another group that can benefit is women that want to be mothers in the future, that want to delay motherhood, so by preserving the eggs, they will have young eggs in the future, if they are not able to conceive naturally because of the age. When women age, the eggs also age and this means that it increases the abnormalities of the eggs and it would be more difficult to have kids, so using young eggs, they will have more probabilities to get pregnant.
Another group that can benefit from fertility preservation are women diagnosed with a diminished ovarian reserve or early menopause because those women will run out of eggs early in life, so they might want to have kids in the future by preserving the fertility, they will be able to do that.
Regarding men this is a bit different because men aren’t born with a limited number of spermatozoa, they produce spermatozoa every three months, so for men, they can they will be good until around 40 years old after that age, a recent study shows that the DNA in the spermatozoa will increase the frequency of abnormalities so by preserving the spermatozoa we’ll be able to have kids in the future.

About this question:

Who is fertility preservation for?

Some patients more than others may need to preserve their fertility for the future, either due to medical treatment (e.g. cancer treatment) or lack of partner at the moment.

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