At Akanksha IVF Centre our fertility preservation service is designed to protect and preserve your fertility for the future. We specialise in providing fertility care for patients who have cancer or where their fertility is at risk.
There are many young women whose fertility may be threatened by cancer or other serious diseases and the treatment for these conditions.
Medical fertility preservation aims to protect and preserve fertility for the future using various treatment options. For women, these can range from freezing of eggs, embryos and ovarian tissue
Egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation):It is the process of storing a woman’s unfertilised eggs for use in the future and is considered an established option for women, with thousands of babies born worldwide from this technique in the last few years. DR KD Nayar, Chief specialist Akanksha IVF Centre see this as a way of preserving the potential for fertility in women whose fertility is at risk due to age or medical treatment and who are not currently in a position to become pregnant
This medical procedure can be used by anyone who is seeking to preserve eggs to potentially extend their fertility. It should be offered to all women of reproductive age who are diagnosed with cancer or other serious medical conditions that will require surgery, chemotherapy, and or radiation that can affect your eggs. Chemotherapy and radiation can harm the ovaries resulting in a reduction in your egg number and a decrease in your future fertility.This procedure is also used by women who want to store their eggs at a younger age in hopes of extending their fertility. This is referred to as elective egg freezing or social egg freezing.Many women postpone childbearing in order to complete their education, advance their career, or find the right partner with whom they want to have children with. As a result, the age of first birth is steadily increasing and many women are delaying having children into their 30’s or 40’s when they may be less fertile and have higher chances of miscarriages. Freezing eggs at a younger age may help them control their reproductive future by extending their fertility to a time when they are ready to become a parent.
To obtain eggs for freezing, a woman will usually undergo hormonal stimulation over 10 – 12 days enabling a number of eggs (usually 10 – 15) to mature. The eggs then undergo a freezing procedure called vitrification. When the woman is ready to use her eggs, they are thawed and then fertilised with sperm using in-vitro fertilisation. Resulting embryos may then be transferred to the woman’s uterus with the hope that a successful pregnancy will occur.
Depending on the circumstances, a woman may have enough time before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy to have more than one cycle of hormone stimulation and egg retrieval. This ensures that a reasonable number of eggs are frozen and therefore an increased chance of a future pregnancy.
Embryo Freezing: If you have a male partner with whom you are planning to have children, you may choose to undergo in vitro fertilisation(IVF) treatment prior to commencing chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Any resulting embryos can then be frozen and used for future pregnancy attempts, often years later. An IVF cycle involves 10 to 14 days of hormone stimulation prior to the woman’s mature eggs being collected in day surgery and fertilised with her partner’s sperm in the laboratory.
Medical fertility preservation for men
If you are diagnosed with a cancer where the recommended treatment may affect sperm quality or production, sperm freezing preserve your chance of having a family in the future when you are well again. If the patient has reasonable sperm before undergoing treatment, we would encourage him to bank (freeze) as many specimens as we can get before he actually starts treatment. The optimal way to do this is to collect a sperm specimen every other day for as long as he has before he starts treatment. That will hopefully allow us to freeze multiple vials from each specimen that he produces.
If you have received a referral to Akanksha IVF for medical fertility preservation , or you wish to refer a patient for medical fertility preservation, please contact 011-45582261,9810398765 and mention this at the time of your appointment to ensure you are seen within 24-48hrs by one of our Fertility Preservation Specialists, and a counsellor if required.