SEXUAL HEALTH: Infertility News
From the December Issue of Galmour (1999)

Cutting-Edge Infertility Breakthrough
What does ovarian transplant mean for your reproductive future?

For the first time ever, doctors have made a sterile woman fertile through an ovarian-tissue transplant. Dancer Margaret Lloyd-Hart, 30, of Phoenix lost one ovary when she was a teenager, due to benign cysts. In May 1998, when she had to have the second ovary removed due to an undisclosed mediacl condition, she chose to have it frozen. "I thought it would be a waste to throw my last ovary away, and I wanted some insurance just in case I decided to have children," She explains. This past February, part of her egg-laden, frozen ovary was reimplanted and less than five months later Lloyd-Hart ovulated. "This is the first indication of success," Says the surgeon who performed the groundbreaking transplant, Kutluk Oktay, M.D., chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at New York Methodist Hospital in New York City.


The Breakthrough provides hope for infertile women--as well as fertile ground for controversy. "This transplant is extermely important because it may allow a woman who would otherwise have been sterile [for example, due to cancer treatments] to someday have her own natural children," says James Dana Kondrup, M.D., director of the Binghamton Gynecology and Fertility practice in Binghamton, New York. Theoretically, it could also enable a health woman to put off having kids until later in life. Can ovary transplants from one woman to another be far behind? Such a possibility concerns Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "Will women buy ovaries from other women with more desirable traits?" he asks. "We'll need to set limitations and regulations."

Until further research is done, Dr. Oktay stresses, this procedure is appropriate only for young women who risk sterility from conditions such as ovarian cysts, endometriosis or chemotherapy--not for women with healthy ovaries. "When you remove, freeze and thaw an ovary, you lose two thirds of the eggs and might only have a few reproductiove years left when the ovaries are reimplanted," he explains. With a lower reserve and selection of healthy eggs (one third), your chances of pregnancy are diminished. Although the long-term effects of ovarian transplant won't be known for several years, Lloyd-Hart--who, ironically, says she isn't planning to have children soon--is hopeful that the procedure will fulfill its promise. "I had no idea that getting my ovary back would create a medical breakthrough," she says. "But I'd be absolutely elated if my being the first person to receive this treatment gives new hope to women who otherwise wouldn't have any." -DINA ROTH

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