Learn more about fertility preservation during Breast Cancer Awareness Month
During Breast Cancer Awareness Month, our Tennessee fertility doctors want to share how we help women with preserving fertility after a breast cancer diagnosis. The specialists at our clinic provide fertility preservation that allows women to save healthy eggs or embryos. They can then use them later to conceive a healthy child after breast cancer treatment.
What to know about fertility preservation during Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Because cancer treatments can harm a woman’s eggs, she may want to undergo fertility preservation before starting cancer treatment. Two types of fertility preservation can help a woman with having children after cancer treatment.
Freezing eggs involves the woman taking medications to stimulate egg production. Her doctor will then retrieve the mature eggs during an outpatient procedure. The final step is sending the eggs to a lab where a specialist flash freezes them for later use.
Freezing embryos is great if the woman has a partner who she would like to have a child with. It can also help women who want to use a sperm donor. This option at our Tennessee fertility doctors involves the same steps as egg freezing. However, instead of freezing the eggs, an embryologist fertilizes them with sperm from the woman’s male partner or a sperm donor. Then, the specialist freezes the resulting embryos.
We make it easy for women to conceive using their frozen eggs or embryos
When a woman’s cancer treatments are complete and she wants to conceive with frozen eggs, a specialist thaws her eggs. Next, an embryologist fertilizes the eggs with sperm. Finally, the doctor transfers one of the resulting embryos into the woman’s uterus.
If a woman has frozen embryos, a specialist will thaw one of them so that one of our Tennessee fertility doctors can use it to perform an embryo transfer.
We hope that Breast Cancer Awareness Month motivates women with breast cancer to learn more about how they can start a family after cancer treatment. Contact us for more information about preserving fertility after a breast cancer diagnosis.
