[Fertility counseling: a new care to be developed in France]

The abandonment of the criterion of pathological infertility in ART and the societal preservation of fertility (FP) are the founders of a new practice which puts the parental project at the center of the support. It is in this context that the University Hospital of Nancy fertility Center has created fertility counselling (FC) care, allowing anyone single or in a couple who wishes to learn about their fertility access to fertility specialists in order to be informed by professionals of the medical, biological and regulatory possibilities of access to parenthood.

We conducted a single-center retrospective observational study from January 1^st, 2020, to April 30^th, 2023, in the Nancy Fertility Center. We collected the medical history, the previous journey in medical assistance to procreation, the reasons of consultation, the parental project and the outcomes of consultation of the patients consulting within the framework of the fertility advice.

Of the 566 consultations that took place during the period, we studied 58 situations that corresponded to actual requests for fertility counseling corresponding to 41 single women, 9 single men and 8 couples. Majority of requests from women or men corresponded to requests for information on their fertility and couples wanted to be informed on their fertility or in a context of actual infertility. Women and men were referred in majority to FP and couples to ART consultation.

FC welcomed a new public questioning itself about its fertility and its parenthood project. FC is intended to be one of the 4 pillars of medical support for access to parenthood, alongside ART, FP, and the donation.