Female fertility preservation: a clinical perspective

For patients with cancer, preserving the ability to start a family at a time of their choosing is especially important and may influence decisions pertaining to cancer treatment. For other women who have delayed childbearing for personal or professional reasons, fertility preservation offers the possibility of having a biological child regardless of age. Though these women may be interested in or benefit from fertility preservation, fertility preservation services remain underutilized. While embryo and oocyte cryopreservation remain the standard strategies for female fertility preservation recommended by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the European Society of Medical Oncology, other strategies (e.g. pharmacological protection of the ovaries and ovarian tissue cryopreservation) are the subject of increasing research. This review will present new data that have become available over the past few years pertaining to all available methods of fertility preservation.