CASE REPORT Ovarian tissue cryopreservation for patients

'To whom correspondence should be addressed For patients about to receive chemotherapy, radiotherapy or to undergo a surgical procedure, loss or impairment of fertility is a major issue. For males, sperm banking is a standard accepted procedure to circumvent loss or damage to spermatozoa and this has been undertaken in this unit since 1975 (Steele et aL, 1995). For women there is no established procedure for gamete storage. Embryo preser-vation is not an option for single women or even for those in a stable relationship, as treatment would have to be delayed while ovarian stimulation and oocyte retrieval took place. With the general shortage of donor oocytes, the possibility of maturing primordial follicles from fetal ovar-ies has become a subject for debate (HFEA 1995: Recent deliberations). In animals, the use of frozen ovarian tissue has been encouraging with a report of a live birth in lamb after orthotopic transplantation (Gosden et aL, 1994). Media attention to the future prospect for freezing ovarian tissue has meant that pressure from patients is likely to increase either for information or as requests to freeze the ovarian tissue which could irretrievably be lost as a result of surgery and/or treatment In the absence of well denned procedures and technologies, should women be given the chance to preserve ovarian tissue prior to receiving intens-ive chemotherapy or radiotherapy? Key words: cancer patients/consent/counselhng/cryopreserv-ation/ovarian tissue Case report A 23 year old, single, well informed woman with stage 1A endometrial cancer was to have a hysterectomy and a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. In the course of the pre-treatment counselling she had requested that her ovary be preserved. This request was based on the hope that the future necessary technologies would become available to mature oocytes in vitro and the fact that surgical access to the ovary was readily available in this procedure. Furthermore, the ovarian tissue was deemed to be irretrievably lost and the added psychological advantage to the young patient of the cryopreservation proced-ure was obvious The immediate issues of freezing methods