Fertility Preservation for Cancer Patients

The process of collecting eggs requires between 8 and 10 appointments over 2 to 3 weeks. During this time, you will take medication to help your eggs develop and mature. At each visit, we’ll draw blood for testing and may perform an ultrasound to track the growth of the eggs.

When your eggs are ready to be extracted, we’ll perform a 15-minute, minimally invasive procedure at our clinic. During the extraction, a fertility specialist will use a thin needle to extract one egg at a time. Each egg will be placed in a test tube labeled with your name and a unique identification number that can be tracked with an individualized code provided to you.

Your eggs will remain frozen until you are ready to use them. They’ll be safely transported to a secure preservation facility until you request them. This option allows you to choose whether the egg will be fertilized with sperm from a partner or a donor in the future.

You may choose to have your eggs fertilized to create embryos before freezing. When thawed, we can implant them in you or a surrogate. This process requires you to decide if the eggs will be fertilized by sperm from a partner or a donor.

If your providers determine there is potential to get pregnant naturally after your cancer treatment, we can prescribe a series of hormone injections to suppress your ovaries. This medicine temporarily prevents your ovaries from releasing eggs so your ovaries are “asleep” during your treatment. Once you stop the medication after treatment, your periods will slowly return to normal if an egg supply remains. 

Some requirements are necessary to ensure the health of you and your eggs. Our providers cannot perform fertility preservation services with eggs for people who are aged 44 or older. Older eggs are not typically healthy enough to be used in the future. People with a body mass index over 44 may also not be candidates for outpatient treatment at our clinic due to safety requirements typically reserved for inpatient care in a hospital setting.

If you plan to freeze sperm before you begin cancer treatment, a semen analysis provides information about the volume, health, and viability of your sperm. Based on this information, we may recommend a one-time collection or multiple visits to ensure we capture and save the healthiest sperm possible.

Collecting sperm for cryopreservation (freezing) is most often done in our clinic via masturbation. After a consultation with a provider, you will provide a semen sample. If viable sperm cannot be collected, a provider will perform an outpatient procedure in our clinic to retrieve sperm from a testicle. This involves applying a local anesthetic to your groin and inserting a thin needle into your testes to extract sperm.

Once collected, sperm can be stored in a frozen state indefinitely before use to begin a pregnancy. Your sperm will be safely and securely transferred for long-term storage at a preservation facility.