What is Onco Freezing?
Oncofertility, which combines "onco" and "fertility", refers to the study or discussion of freezing sperm or eggs before cancer therapy. Anything relating to cancer is referred to as "onco". It is a hot issue because it is crucial to consider—or to have the chance to consider—freezing patients' eggs or sperm before undergoing cancer treatment. Before beginning cancer treatment, anybody of reproductive age with cancer, who may not have finished having children or even begun, can consider whether or not they wish to preserve their fertility by egg or sperm freezing.
Types of Onco Freezing
Sperm Banking
Sperm banking (sperm freezing) is done before beginning medical therapy. Males who lack sperm in their ejaculate—due to either a blockage or testicular dysfunction—have the option of having Surgical Sperm Retrieval. Semen samples are normally obtained by masturbation in a secluded space. After being obtained, the sperm is treated in a lab, frozen, and kept for use during in vitro or intrauterine fertilization (IVF).
Embryo banking
Embryo banking or embryo freezing is taking a woman's egg or eggs and fertilizing them in a lab with sperm to create an embryo that will later be used for in vitro fertilization (IVF). About two weeks are needed to finish it. The resultant embryos are cryopreserved (frozen) and stored until the persons are fully remission-free and healthy enough to conceive.
Oocyte (Egg) Banking
Oocyte (Egg) banking is one of the most recent advancements in assisted reproduction. So far, it has contributed to the birth of more than 500 children globally, although still being regarded as an experimental method. Egg banking takes around two weeks to complete, just like embryo banking.
Ovarian Tissue Freezing
When an entire or portion of an ovary is taken by laparoscopy for ovarian tissue freezing, it is also regarded as experimental. To be transplanted back into a woman's body following therapy, the ovarian tissue is often sliced into tiny strips, frozen, and kept.
Medical Suppression
Long-acting drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists (GnRH-a) can be used in medical suppression treatment to put a woman into menopause temporarily. A few weeks before the initiation of chemotherapy or pelvic radiation therapy, these hormones are often administered as a monthly injection. Reducing ovarian activity is intended to decrease the number of damaged eggs and, thus, lessen the chance of infertility.
Surgical Transposition
Surgical transposition entails transferring the ovaries aside if the intended location for radiation therapy is in the pelvic area. During an outpatient laparoscopic procedure, the ovaries are often elevated above the pelvic region.
Reasons for Onco Freezing
A doctor will hopefully be able to freeze some of the patient's eggs after this surgery. The frozen eggs are storable indefinitely through vitrification, which is so extraordinary that it's like hitting the pause button.
When eggs are removed from a patient at 29 years old, those eggs act as though they are 29 years old. Therefore, patients run the miscarriage and Down syndrome risks of a 29-year-old, not a 40-year-old, if those 29-year-old eggs at age 40 are utilized.
It's an amazing technology that has enabled cancer survivors to start families later in life. Although freezing human eggs does not ensure that the patient will conceive, it can make a difference since many cancer survivors may actually experience menopause as a result of their chemotherapy or radiation treatments and so be producing no eggs at all.
Conclusion
The optimal time to protect fertility for a person with a cancer diagnosis is before starting cancer therapy. The professionals at Apollo Fertility in Amritsar are pleased to meet with patients who have received a cancer diagnosis and want to have children in the future. They go over the potential effects of the therapy on the patient's fertility and their alternatives for trying to maintain it.
To protect eggs from treatment, this exploratory approach includes taking hormones restricting ovarian activity. The treatment is typically not advised as a dependable way to preserve fertility since its usefulness has not yet been shown.
The ovaries are stimulated to generate multiple mature eggs during the egg-freezing process. Then, these eggs are taken out, frozen, and kept for later use. Eggs that have been frozen are suspended in time; therefore, their quality is unaffected by the freezing process.
The hazards associated with taking fertility medications pertain to the particular reproductive therapy. Not all eggs will survive the freezing and thawing procedure or fertilization because egg freezing is still a relatively new method.
Doctors advise freezing 18 to 21 eggs per intended kid based on our current success rates.
As one might expect, each individual's egg output varies greatly from cycle to cycle, but on average, 6 to 10 eggs are collected on any given day. The woman cycling's age is quite crucial since as one gets older, ovarian reserve decreases.
