Pregnancy viable for cancer patients with damaged ovaries
- Innovative procedure will allow women to get pregnant after chemotherapy
- The cancer treatment often leaves the eggs and the ovaries damaged
- But this procedure will freeze a slice of the woman’s ovarian tissue that contains the eggs prior to chemotherapy
- Once the treatment is done, the tissue will be transplanted back in with reproductive function restored
Mary Kekatos For Dailymail.com
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A groundbreaking procedure will allow women who have survived cancer a chance to get pregnant.
Chemotherapy often causes damage to the ovaries, and women who undergo the treatment are commonly left unable to have a baby.
But a New York fertility doctor has come up with a plan to ensure that women will be able to have a natural pregnancy.
The procedure – similar to a skin graft – stores and freezes a slice of a woman’s ovarian tissue that contains eggs before the start of chemo.
When a woman has recovered from chemo and is cancer-free, the tissue is transplanted back into her ovary. Her reproductive function is restored and she will not have to undergo in-vitro fertilization (IVF) or egg donation, according to the doctor who is spearheading the project.
A groundbreaking procedure will allow female cancer patients to become pregnant even if their ovaries were damaged during chemotherapy by freezing a slice of ovarian tissue containing the eggs and transplanting it back in when treatment is done (file image)
New York fertility doctor Dr George Kofinas has submitted a plan to the state’s Health Department to open a reproductive surgery center that will specialize in ovarian-tissue harvesting and transplantation, according to the New York Post.
‘The demand for this service is projected to be very high,’ Dr Kofinas said in a presentation to the Health Department’s review panel.
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‘We have an ever-growing number of cancer survivors that come to us now and their ovaries have been completely destroyed by chemotherapy and other kinds of treatment, and we can’t help them unless we use donor eggs.’
CHEMO DOESN’T HARM UNBORN BABY, STUDY SAYS
Receiving cancer treatment while pregnant does not result in health problems for unborn children, researchers have found.
Neither chemotherapy, radiotherapy nor surgery harmed patients’ babies, according to a 2015 study from the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium.
The researchers said that women who are diagnosed with cancer while pregnant should not delay their treatment.
Professor Frédéric Amant and his team examined 129 children born after exposure to cancer treatment in the womb.
The data found that the babies – aged 18 months and then three years when they were tested – had developed normally when compared to children whose mothers had not had cancer.
Professor Amant said: ‘Our results show that fear of cancer treatment is no reason to terminate a pregnancy, that maternal treatment should not be delayed and that chemotherapy can be given.
‘The study also shows that children suffer more from prematurity than from chemotherapy, so avoiding prematurity is more important than avoiding chemotherapy.’
Many doctors recommend that a woman not get pregnant in the first six months after finishing chemotherapy because during this time period is when damaged eggs leave the body.
Other doctors suggest waiting between two to five years before trying to have a baby in case the cancer returns.
But Dr Kofinas says the unusual procedure will allow women to not have to wait as long before trying to conceive.
‘Providing these people with the service of storing their ovarian tissue for the time they become reproductively active is a unique service which we think will serve well in the metropolitan area, the state and the country,’ he said.
The only place in the US where the procedure has been tested and performed before is the Infertility Center of St. Louis in Missouri.
Center leader Dr Sherman Silber told the Post that the success rate for delivering a live baby is 75 percent.
‘It has not caught on in the United States elsewhere because it is not a ‘money maker’ compared to IVF,’ he claimed.
Dr Kofinas plans to have a lab adjacent to the operating room to immediately preserve ovarian tissue.
‘We have developed the technology for the ovarian tissue freezing and the technology for the surgery. But you have to have those things together or you can’t offer it,’ he said.
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