86 successful births and 9 ongoing pregnancies worldwide in women transplanted with frozen-thawed ovarian tissue: focus on birth and perinatal outcome in 40 of these children

Abstract

Purpose: This study aims to make an account of the children born following transplantation of frozen-thawed ovarian tissue worldwide with specific focus on the perinatal outcome of the children. Furthermore, perinatal outcome of seven deliveries (nine children) from Denmark is reported.

Methods: PubMed was searched for papers of deliveries resulting from ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC). Seven women underwent OTC prior to chemotherapy. Four of these women still had low ovarian function and had tried to conceive. They therefore had tissue autotransplanted to augment their fertility. The other three women had developed premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) after the end of treatment.

Results: Worldwide, approximately 95 children have been born or will be born in the near future from OTC, including these 9 new children. Information on the perinatal outcome was found on 40 children. The mean gestational age was 39 weeks and the mean birth weight was 3168 g of the singleton pregnancies, which is within internationally recognized normal standards. Furthermore, half the singletons resulted from natural conception and all twins resulted from in vitro fertilization treatment. All seven Danish women became pregnant within 1-3 years after transplantation. They gave birth to nine healthy children.

Conclusion: The data is reassuring and further suggests that cryopreservation of ovarian tissue is becoming an established fertility preservation method. The seven Danish women reported in this study were all in their early thirties when OTC was performed. Most other reported cases were in the women's twenties. This suggests that the follicular pool in the thirties is large enough and sufficient to sustain fertility.

Keywords: Cryopreservation; Deliveries; Fertility preservation; Ovarian tissue transplantation.

Conflict of interest statement

Ethical approval

This is an established treatment approved and authorized by the Danish Ministry of Health. The Minister of Health has approved the procedure. The collection of data, which were collected from patient records, was approved by the Danish Data Protection Agency and the Minister of Health (J.no.: 30-1372).

Therefore, for this type of study, formal consent is not required.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.