Modern Cancer Treatments

For several decades, frozen embryo transfer (FET) has been a go-to method for patients diagnosed with cancer. Prior to beginning treatment, a patient’s still healthy eggs (or sperm) are extracted and frozen for later use.

Over the years, this method has seen a growing number of successes, with one of its most recent triumphs being a baby in the U.K. who was conceived by sperm that had been frozen for twenty-five years.

While the standard in vitro fertilization (IVF) process can set patients back $10,000 per cycle and requires countless doctor visits, ultrasounds, and oftentimes painful injections, frozen embryo transfer is only a fraction of the cost (as little as $3,000) and promises to be both safer and easier on patients trying to have a baby.

With IVF, many women experience mood swings, as well as sore and swollen ovaries. Meanwhile, patients are exposed to the risk of hyperstimulation, a potentially life-threatening condition whose symptoms include weight gain, vomiting, and shortness of breath.

The technique employed for FET, however, involves stimulating a woman’s ovaries more mildly with fewer drugs, thus producing a smaller quantity of eggs. Those eggs are then fertilized in a lab before being frozen, a state in which they can remain for an indefinite period of time. When the patient is ready, the frozen embryos are implanted in the uterus during a normal menstrual cycle.

In some cases, in vitro patients employing an egg donor have also turned to frozen embryo transfer for subsequent treatment. By using unused, frozen embryos from a previous IVF cycle, couples save money and prevent their donor from undergoing additional stimulated cycles.

Financial reasons aside, research has found that IVF babies born from frozen embryos tend to be bigger and healthier than those born from fresh embryos. This is, in part, a result of longer gestation periods, which gives the fetus more time to grow into a healthy birth weight. Danish researchers also suggest this is because only high-quality embryos survive the freezing and thawing process.

This begs the question: should cancer patients be the only ones benefiting from this safer, more cost-effective procedure?