The fact that a person suffers from cancer should not be a condemnation to give up future parenthood. The Assisted Reproduction Medical Center of Valencia (CREA) is committed to advances in fertility preservation. CREA belongs to the first level centers of Top Doctors and is a national reference in assisted reproduction, pioneer in abandoning the classic method of freezing, since 2005 they opted for vitrification as the exclusive method for the maintenance of embryos at low temperatures as it has the advantage of avoiding the formation of intracellular crystals and thus minimizing cell damage by cryopreservation.
Cancer treatments can leave after-effects such as amenorrhea (disappearance of menstruation) and a decrease in women’s ovarian reserve, producing an effect as if the woman were 10 years older. For this reason, the co-director of CREA, Carmen Calatayud, considers that women who are going to receive cancer treatment should preserve their fertility before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy, “since the effects of these on fertility can be devastating. The success in preserving fertility will depend to a great extent on the speed with which action is taken”. However, this expert has pointed out that it is very important to study each case individually, since “the presence of metastases could make ovarian stimulation inadvisable”.
Thanks to advances in these techniques, women can have the opportunity to realize their dream of becoming mothers once they have overcome the disease, without having to give up their own genetic material. Unlike men, women are born with a limited endowment of oocytes which diminishes after the age of 35 when only 10% of the initial reserve is left, so that the possibilities of gestation are diminished with age. Thus, it is advisable to perform fertility preservation when there is still an adequate oocyte reserve, i.e. no later than 35 to 38 years of age. However, as Dr. Calatayud points out, “even at older ages, each patient must be evaluated individually”.
For this purpose, the techniques that offer the best results are the vitrification of oocytes and embryos. In both cases, a previous ovarian stimulation and the recovery of these oocytes by follicular aspiration is required. Once the oocytes have been obtained, those that are mature and of good quality will be vitrified. In the case of embryo vitrification, the oocytes will be inseminated with sperm from the couple or from an anonymous donor, depending on each case. “The appearance of the embryo vitrification technique has made possible greater effectiveness by achieving better survival of the embryos and a better implantation rate, which translates into better pregnancy rates,” states Dr. Calatayud.
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