Fertility Preservation
What is it?
The techniques regarding fertility preservation offer the possibility of postponing the dream of having kids to a more appropriated time. Both men and women can have their genetic material preserved though a freezing process (cryopreservation). This is an additional technique to the Intrauterine Insemination and In Vitro Fertilization processes.
Women have their egg cells collected after ovarian stimulation. Generally, men’s sperm tend to be collected by means of ejaculation, but it can also be made directly from the epididymis or the testicle. After that, in lab, their gametes are frozen though a technique called glazing. This allows us to preserve them in a secure way, for as much time as it needs, and their effectiveness is preserved as well.
Whom should do it?
It’s more often in cases such as the following:
- Women who already planned to delay their motherhood to somewhere in the future due to economic or professional issues, since female fertility highly decreases past the age of 35.
- Early menopause family history
- When patients are going to engage in some kind of treatment that may threaten their fertility, such as some delicate surgery in the ovary or reproductive organ, chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant and so on.
Now concerning sperm freezing, it’s usually indicated in situations such as the following:
- When sperm amount is progressively decreasing and the man has no plans of having kids in a short term
- Before vasectomy surgery (in cases where there are still some doubts about having children in the future)
- Men engaging in some kind of treatment that threatens their fertility, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, prostate surgery and so on
Embryo Freezing
In an In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) it may occur that the number of evolved embryos is greater than the ones that are going to be used. That happens due to a limit that’s set to the number of embryos that can be transferred in order to avoid multiple pregnancy.
The non-transferred embryos are frozen so that they can be used next month (depending on the fertilization process outcome) or saved for another pregnancy.