Michelle Emblenton, biochemist at inviTRA, tells us when she is advising fertility preservation:
Well, there are two main areas in which to think about fertility preservation. The first is for cancer patients. The treatments for cancers (such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy) tend to be very aggressive and can affect, or perhaps, destroy, the precursor cells which produce sperm or indeed the eggs. This will obviously lead to problems in fertility. The idea is to take a sample of the eggs or the sperm and freeze them before the cancer treatment so that they can be used at a later date in an assisted reproduction treatment if the patient is now healthy and chooses to have children. Another reason to use fertility preservation is due to the changes in our modern society. Modern life is quite hectic with its economic restraints and more and more people are choosing to become parents at a later age. Unfortunately, as you age your fertility declines. If you are thinking about having children later and you want to delay parenthood, it's a good idea to consider fertility preservation so you don't have any fertility issues in the future. We can actually think about fertility preservation as people becoming their own egg and sperm donors for future use, for their future cells. So, if in the future you choose to have children when you didn't when you were younger, you have donated your own eggs and old sperm for your treatments.
