Ovary Freeze, An Alternative to Egg Freeze?
We have seen much support for egg freezing as an option for young women who want to have children at a later age, but should ovary tissue freezing become the alternative option for those who want to preserve their fertility without medical needs?
Ovarian tissue preservation technique has been used for women diagnosed with cancer as a way of preserving fertility and eggs, although it’s fair to say that egg freezing is more commonly used as a form of fertility preservation.
However, recently we have seen ovarian tissue preservation and its benefits particularly with the news of Miss Al Matrooshi, the first woman in Britain to have given birth after having an ovary removed as a child. Tissue sample from Miss Al Matrooshi's frozen ovary was re-implanted which enabled the ovary to repair and allow eggs to be produced. However this technique is not the first of its kind in the world and had been previously carried out with the same results on a patient in the Netherlands back in 2015.
Despite its positive results, this technique has had some opposition, however Dr Sherman Silber from the United States who developed the technique in 2005 gives assurance that the procedure is straightforward and not as complicated as it seems.
Further recent studies with mice at Duke University in the US, has shown ovaries affected by chemotherapy treatment had shown some good results using the ovarian tissue re-implantation technique. This study is in its infancy but gives great hope to those considered infertile post chemotherapy treatment.
The benefits I can see for this technique for all women and not only those with life threatening conditions, is that it allows women’s ovaries to repair and therefore enabling women to fall pregnant naturally without the need of IVF as in egg freezing, but this technique is not commonly available to all women unlike egg freezing.
We are seeing more and more women having fertility issues and science development in the area of reproduction is moving forward allowing women time to plan and prepare pregnancy later in life.
As a natural fertility expert I can help women with lifestyle techniques to help promote their cellular, chemical and hormonal functions which help to provide an optimal environment for pregnancy to occur, but this can be limited when ageing and degenerative cellular function makes it difficult to conceive naturally.
However, as a woman, scientist, and as a natural fertility expert, I fully support interventions and developments which enables women to preserve ovaries with a freedom of choice of when they choose to start a family.
With an average cost around eight thousand pounds for the ovarian freeze procedure itself, this technique is something that not all women can afford, however could be seen as priceless if it means the preservation of ovaries which can increase your chance of pregnancy later in life without the fear of age, certainly something worth considering.
