Onco Fertility
Special Fertility Care for Cancer Patients
Facing a cancer diagnosis can be overwhelming, especially when considering its impact on your future family. At Anova, our caring team supports you in navigating treatments and fertility preservation, prioritizing your appointments to meet your unique needs. We understand that time is key and we often prioritize your appointments and treatments in order to accommodate your unique needs.
What is Onco Fertility Care?
Onco Fertility combines oncology and reproductive endocrinology to help cancer patients and survivors preserve their fertility. Cancer treatments can harm reproductive cells (both sperm and eggs) and organs, impacting future fertility. Discussing fertility preservation options early on is crucial for young cancer survivors to have the option of starting a family later. Let us help you create a fertility preservation plan that works for you.
Fertility Care for Those Facing Cancer
Cancer patients now have more fertility preservation options than ever before, such as freezing eggs, sperm, or embryos. It’s important to talk to healthcare providers about these options before beginning cancer treatment to potentially have a family in the future. Life after cancer can still be fulfilling and include starting a family. There are many ways to have a child after cancer treatment, including fertility treatments using cryopreserved sperm, eggs, or embryos, surrogacy, egg or sperm donation, embryo adoption, and adoption.
Treatment Options
In assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), cryopreservation is the freezing of sperm, eggs, or embryos for later use. Fertility preservation is a safe and effective way for individuals to preserve their ability to have a child after cancer treatments. Cryopreservation must happen before starting any cancer treatments.
In male patients, sperm cryopreservation is non-invasive. It is currently the most effective option for men hoping to preserve their fertility. Men who have cryopreserved sperm have high chances of fathering a child, especially when those sperm are used in intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).
ICSI, a specialized form of in vitro fertilization (IVF), involves injecting sperm directly into an egg, followed by the transfer of the embryo. Other fertility treatments such as intrauterine insemination (IUI), putting sperm directly in the uterus, may be possible if the patient’s thawed sperm has high motility.
Egg freezing is a modern method of cryopreservation with potential benefits for women without partners or who have ethical/religious concerns about embryo freezing. Although eggs are fragile, advancements in research are making freezing eggs a more feasible option.
Embryo cryopreservation is the process of freezing embryos created using IVF and storing them for later use. Embryos that are cryopreserved can be stored for many years. It’s important to note that sperm from a willing partner or donor is required for the production of embryos.
The steps of embryo cryopreservation include:
- Before any cancer treatment, an egg is retrieved and fertilized with sperm to produce an embryo
- The embryo is vitrified and then stored
- When the woman has completed cancer treatment and is ready to carry a baby, the embryo is thawed and used to create a pregnancy
Onco Fertility Preservation Funding Options
OHIP covers freezing eggs and sperm for medical reasons like cancer treatment for Ontario residents with a valid health card. However, it does not cover storage or fertility drugs.
