Fertility after Chemotherapy
The story is about a young woman who recently managed to give birth to a perfectly healthy baby without any prior assisted reproduction treatment whatsoever, even after having undergone both chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation due to sickle cell anaemia during her teenage years.
From the very beginning, Ob-Gyn, Fertility Specialist and Endoscopic Surgeon Thanos Paraschos and his team of experts at EmBIO Medical Center in Athens, Greece, who undertook the incident, were very well aware that the chemotherapy would cause irreversible damage to the young woman’s fertility.
Shortly before celebrating her 14th birthday, the then teenage patient was subjected to removal of ovarian tissue from right-hand-side ovary and the sample was kept in freeze for the following 12 years. It’s worth mentioning that there was no sign of a menstruation prior to the surgical procedure.
Following the ovarian tissue extraction from her RHS ovary, our young teenage patient underwent chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation and was given immunosuppressive treatment. Practically, this meant that the girl's fertility was to be destroyed.
In order to regain the ability to have a menstruation cycle and systematically restore hormones, the scientific team of Thanos Paraschos granted the young patient HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) until the age of 25.
At that age, it was decided that the transplant of the frozen ovarian tissue removed when she was 14, was to be performed.
Two years after the successful transplant, the now 27 year old woman managed to restore her ovulatory cycles and conceive her baby naturally.
Today, despite the adversities the young mother has experienced, she can enjoy the gift of motherhood holding her own child in her arms.
It should be noted that this is the first time that a woman was able to become pregnant naturally having undergone removal and freezing of ovarian tissue before even having started her period.
