Hadassah extends fertility of cancer patients

Doctors at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital have devised a method for extending the fertility of young cancer patients.Using a process used for adult female cancer patients, an Israeli medical team succeeded in harvesting and freezing eggs from the ovarian tissue of young girls about to undergo chemotherapy, giving them hope of preserving their fertility.For several years, women facing chemotherapy have been able to preserve their fertility by having an ovary surgically removed. The ovary is then sliced and frozen. After treatment and recovery, the ovaries can be re-implanted in the body and function normally.Using the same technique, the Hadassah team treated eight girls aged 5 to 20 over the past three years. The team demonstrated that even among the youngest girls, ova, or eggs, could be extracted, left to mature in the laboratory and then frozen.The experiment’s published results were presented last month at the annual conference of the European Society for Fertility.