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Ovary successfully transplanted to arm

Scientists looking at different ways to avoid infertility due to cancer treatment have successfully saved a cancer patient's fertility after transplanting one of her ovaries onto her arm.

Dutch surgeons, led by Dr Carina Hilders at Leiden University hope the unnamed woman could become the first woman in the world to become pregnant thanks to the procedure.

The technique has the advantage of keeping the ovary whole and intact with a good blood supply, which should improve success rate they say.

Previous techniques have included freezing eggs from the woman and later fertilising them using IVF. Recently, a baby was born to Ouarda Touirat, 32, who conceived naturally and gave birth to a baby girl this year after her ovarian tissue was removed and frozen seven years ago before chemotherapy, then re-implanted into her pelvis last year.

However, the success of these transplants can be hampered by poor blood supply and Dr Hilders believes that the success can be improved by moving the whole ovary, complete with it's blood supply which would then be attached to blood vessels in the arm.

The technique, called ovarian autotransplantation, was carried out on a 29 year old woman with cervical cancer.

The authors said, "It seems very likely that ovarian autotransplantation will be a realistic goal to achieve for women with cancer."

However, they pointed out that it would not be suitable for women treated with chemotherapy because this cancer treatment targets the whole body and could potentially damage the ovaries regardless of where they are located in the body.

Dr James Catt, lead embryologist at the IVF Centre, St James' Hospital in Leeds, said, "It's quite novel because nobody has really done this before. What people have been looking at before is removing part or all of the ovary and chopping it up into small pieces and then deep freezing them.

"That comes at a price because when you thaw out that tissue not all of the tissue will survive. Then it has to be grafted back and you have to hope that the tissue will recover. So potentially this technique could be better because you are not having to deep freeze the tissue and you are maintaining the blood supply."

But he said it would mean that the woman would be limited to IVF treatment if she wanted to become pregnant.

"You would stimulate the ovary in the arm and recover an egg from the arm and then do IVF. Whereas with freezing an ovarian slice you can put it back into the right place on the ovary and you can conceive in the usual way. You are not restricted to IVF."

He said that, with any method you would have to be sure that the ovary did not contain any cancer cells.

• Have you successfully conceived after chemo? Share your experiences in Discuss, Debate and Deliberate
• Find out more about infertility in the Infertility pages