Treatments
Description of available treatments
Sperm Freezing
LFC offers sperm freezing for patients. Candidates for sperm freezing include:
- Men who are about to undergo surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy that may impair their future fertility.
- Patients that have very few sperm or perhaps are producing sperm that show evidence of deterioration over time
- Patients that have difficulty producing a sample on the day of treatment and so banking some sperm in advance can overcome this difficulty.
- Surplus sperm obtained following surgical sperm retrieval (PESA/TESA)
Sperm is frozen in a special medium that protects them from damage during the freeze-thaw process. Not all of the sperm will survive the freezing process and in order to assess the sperm survival of each freeze we perform a “post-thaw” analysis. According to current regulations, sperm can be stored for 10 years. The genetic contents of sperm are not usually affected by the freezing process and survival of sperm is very high.
Consent must be gained by the male patient before the sperm is stored. When it is frozen, very detailed checks, recordings and documentation are completed to ensure the sperm is labelled correctly and can be easily but accurately identifiable to the correct male patient.