Practices and Attitudes Regarding Women Undergoing Fertility Preservation: A Survey of the National Physicians Cooperative

Reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialists' knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes regarding the care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals

Objective

To investigate associations between reproductive endocrinology and infertility (REI) providers' prior training and current knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors regarding fertility preservation and family building for transgender and gender-diverse (T/GD) patients.

Design

The survey was distributed to members of the Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, the REI-physician-focused professional body within the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, with additional participants recruited through snowball sampling.

Results

Participants (n = 206) reported on training in T/GD care; 51% endorsed prior training. Most participants (93%) believed T/GD individuals were as fit for parenthood as cisgender individuals. Prior training was associated with an increased likelihood of offering T/GD health resources and more frequent consultations with specialist colleagues.Common barriers to providing care indicated by respondents included cost, delays in gender-affirming care, and lack of knowledge of the potential impact of hormonal interventions. Common facilitators included education and training, prior experience, and affordability of services.

Conclusions

Most REI providers believed T/GD individuals are fit for parenthood and agreed that prior training facilitates care for T/GD patients. The lack of provider knowledge emerged as a barrier to care. Although training helped facilitate some components of care, systemic barriers such as the cost and variability of patient population characteristics/experiences are important considerations when serving T/GD individuals.

A View from the past into our collective future: the oncofertility consortium vision statement

Purpose

Today, male and female adult and pediatric cancer patients, individuals transitioning between gender identities, and other individuals facing health extending but fertility limiting treatments can look forward to a fertile future. This is, in part, due to the work of members associated with the Oncofertility Consortium.

Methods

The Oncofertility Consortium is an international, interdisciplinary initiative originally designed to explore the urgent unmet need associated with the reproductive future of cancer survivors. As the strategies for fertility management were invented, developed or applied, the individuals for who the program offered hope, similarly expanded. As a community of practice, Consortium participants share information in an open and rapid manner to addresses the complex health care and quality-of-life issues of cancer, transgender and other patients. To ensure that the organization remains contemporary to the needs of the community, the field designed a fully inclusive mechanism for strategic planning and here present the findings of this process.

Results

This interprofessional network of medical specialists, scientists, and scholars in the law, medical ethics, religious studies and other disciplines associated with human interventions, explore the relationships between health, disease, survivorship, treatment, gender and reproductive longevity.

Conclusion

The goals are to continually integrate the best science in the service of the needs of patients and build a community of care that is ready for the challenges of the field in the future.

Ovarian stimulation is a safe and effective fertility preservation option in the adolescent and young adult population

PURPOSE

The aim of this study is to describe the multidisciplinary approach and controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) outcomes in adolescent and young adult (AYA) patients (ages 13-21) who underwent oocyte cryopreservation for fertility preservation (FP).

METHODS

Multi-site retrospective cohort was performed from 2007 to 2018 at Northwestern University and Michigan University. Data were analyzed by chi-square test, t-test, and logistic regression.

RESULTS

Forty-one patients began COH of which 38 patients successfully underwent oocyte retrieval, with mature oocytes obtained and cryopreserved without any adverse outcomes. To treat this group of patients, we use a multidisciplinary approach with a patient navigator. When dividing patients by ages 13-17 vs. 18-21, the median doses of FSH used were 2325 and 2038 IU, the median number of mature oocytes retrieved were 10 and 10, and median number frozen oocytes were 11 and 13, respectively. Median days of stimulation were 10 for both groups. There was no statistical difference in BMI, AMH, peak E₂, FSH dosage, days stimulated, total oocytes retrieved, mature oocytes retrieved, and oocytes frozen between the two groups. Three patients were canceled for poor response.

CONCLUSION

COH with oocyte cryopreservation is a feasible FP option for AYAs who may not have other alternatives when appropriate precautions are taken, such as proper counseling and having a support team. These promising outcomes correspond to similar findings of recent small case series, providing hope for these patients to have genetically related offspring in the future.

FertiPROTEKT, Oncofertility Consortium and the Danish Fertility-Preservation Networks - What Can We Learn From Their Experiences?

Fertility preservation is an increasingly important discipline. It requires close coordination between reproductive medicine specialists, reproductive biologists, and oncologists in various disciplines. In addition, it represents a particular health policy challenge, since fertility-protection measures are to be understood as a treatment for side effects of gonadotoxic treatments and would therefore normally have to be reimbursed by health insurance companies. Therefore, it is inevitable that fertility-preservation activities should organise themselves into a network structure both as a medical-logistic network and as a professional medical society. The necessary network structures can differ significantly at regional, national, and international level, as the size of the regions to be integrated and the local cultural and geographical conditions, as well as the political conditions are very different. To address these issues, the current review aims to point out the basic importance and the chances but also the difficulties of fertility-protection networks and give practical guidance for the development of such network structures. We will not only discuss network structures theoretically but also present them based on three established, different sized networks, such as the Danish Network (www.rigshospitalet.dk), representing a centralised network in a small country; the German-Austrian-Swiss network FertiPROTEKT® (www.fertiprotekt.com), representing a centralised as well as decentralised network in a large country; and the Oncofertility® Consortium (www.oncofertility.northwestern.edu), representing a decentralised, internationally oriented network, primarily serving the transfer of knowledge among its members.

The National Physicians Cooperative: transforming fertility management in the cancer setting and beyond

Once unimaginable, fertility management is now a nationally established part of cancer care in institutions, from academic centers to community hospitals to private practices. Over the last two decades, advances in medicine and reproductive science have made it possible for men, women and children to be connected with an oncofertility specialist or offered fertility preservation soon after a cancer diagnosis. The Oncofertility Consortium's National Physicians Cooperative is a large-scale effort to engage physicians across disciplines – oncology, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, reproductive endocrinology, and behavioral health – in clinical and research activities to enable significant progress in providing fertility preservation options to children and adults. Here, we review the structure and function of the National Physicians Cooperative and identify next steps.

A Survey Study of Attitude and Knowledge Regarding Female Fertility Preservation Among Reproductive Health Professionals in Fujian, China

PURPOSE

Oncofertility is a newly developed medical field dedicated to preserving adolescent and young adult-aged cancer patients' fertility. For female cancer patients who desire to have children, fertility preservation has become an important concern before the cancer therapy. This study for the first time aimed to investigate attitude and knowledge regarding female fertility preservation among reproductive health professionals in China.

METHODS

An online questionnaire assessing participants' demographics, experience, attitude, and basic knowledge regarding oncofertility was designed and distributed to reproductive health professionals in Fujian, one of the major regions for cancer and reproductive care in southeast China.

RESULTS

The majority of participants (96.6%) who were familiar with fertility preservation were willing to collaborate with oncologists on preserving patients' fertility. However, ∼20% of participants were not familiar with the term fertility preservation, and 30.4% and 52.2% of them were never consulted by a cancer patient or an oncologist about the infertility risk from cancer therapy, respectively. Years of working experience, but not gender, educational background, and marital status, was significantly associated with participants' oncofertility experience and attitude. A majority of participants (79.3%) had a middle or low level of oncofertility knowledge, which was significantly linked to their educational background.

CONCLUSION

Most of the surveyed reproductive health professionals held a positive attitude toward interdisciplinary collaboration with oncologists during oncofertility practice. However, the lack of their oncofertility knowledge highlighted the need of standard oncofertility education and training in China.

Fertility Lost-Fertility Found: Narratives from the Leading Edge of Oncofertility

A cancer diagnosis at a young age creates one of the most existential crises one can imagine. The good news is that for many of these young patients, they will survive their diagnosis. They will be told of the side effects of treatment including loss of hair but will not be told of the other losses associated with their reproductive function-loss of menstrual cycles, early menopause and the potential for pregnancy for women, loss of viable sperm for men, and loss of sexual libido in both cases. Not all cancer treatments result in the same series of fertility effects so one of the issues that physicians face is determining what the best course of fertility sparing options should be. That dilemma is in the best cases-in many more cases the patients are not told about the potential loss of fertility and are left with a myriad of financial and psychological decisions and costs that they navigate on their own. The stories in this symposium capture this unfolding series of events. Some cases result in good prognosis and fertility options that are appropriate and the patients are happy with the outcome. Others express regret and loss of potential now beyond their reach. As a practitioner in the field I find these narratives reinforce how important the broad research field of oncofertility is. These patients are at the forefront of emerging technologies and emerging medical interactions between disciplines that were miles away from each other. The stories illuminate the individual and the universal and are critical to the overall context of this field.

Criopreserved ovarian tissue transplantation and bone restoration metabolism in castrated rats

OBJECTIVES

to evaluate estradiol levels and autotransplantation heated ovarian tissue effects, after vitrification, on rats bone metabolism previously oophorectomized bilaterally.

METHODS

experimental study with 27 rats aged 11 to 12 weeks and weighing 200g to 300g, submitted to bilateral oophorectomy and ovarian tissue cryopreservation for subsequent reimplantation. Animals were divided into two groups, A and B, with 8 and 19 rats, respectively. Autotransplantation occurred in two periods according to castration time: after one week, in group A, and after one month in group B. Serum estradiol measurements and ovary and tibia histological analysis were performed before and after oophorectomy period (early or late) and one month after reimplantation.

RESULTS

in groups A and B, tibia median cortical thickness was 0.463±0.14mm (mean±SD) at the baseline, 0.360±0.14mm after oophorectomy and 0.445±0.17mm one month after reimplantation p<0.005). Trabecular means were 0.050±0.08mm (mean±SD) at baseline, 0.022±0.08mm after oophorectomy and 0.049±0.032mm one month after replantation (p<0.005). There was no statistical difference in estradiol variation between the two study groups (p=0.819).

CONCLUSION

cryopreserved ovarian tissue transplantation restored bone parameters, and these results suggest that ovarian reimplantation in women may have the same beneficial effects on bone metabolism.