TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital performed its first ovarian tissue freezing surgery at the end of last year, helping a 37-year-old woman surnamed Chen (陳) with cancer preserve her chances of having children, CNA reported.
At a press conference on Thursday, Chen said that she was diagnosed in October with breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes. Facing surgery and targeted therapies that could cause permanent ovarian damage and infertility, she chose to have her ovarian tissue temporarily removed and frozen.
The surgery removes a small piece of the ovary, which is then cut into thin strips and quickly frozen, the hospital said. The tissue can later be reimplanted to help women have children and maintain hormone production. The procedure helps preserve thousands of immature eggs and can also help delay menopause.
Su Yu-ting (蘇鈺婷), director of the hospital’s reproductive medicine department, said that Chen began cancer treatment six days following the freezing surgery. She added that once the frozen tissue is thawed and reimplanted, her ovulation and hormone function can return within nine months.
The hospital highlighted that its team has tested the method on mice, which regained hormone function following the procedure. It added that more than 10,000 women worldwide have had the surgery, and over 300 of them have given birth to about 200 babies.
The hospital said the surgery has advantages over egg freezing, which requires fertility injections and a complex egg retrieval process that can cost up to NT$120,000 (US$4,000) per cycle. Egg freezing also requires about two weeks of hormone injections to stimulate the ovaries before eggs can be collected, making it unsuitable for women undergoing cancer treatment, who may go into temporary menopause.
According to the Taiwanese Society for Reproductive Medicine, the ovarian tissue freezing procedure has been recognized by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and several international medical organizations as a safe and reliable way for women facing major health conditions to preserve their fertility.
