Abstract
Hormonal and surgical treatments for transgender people have a deleterious effect on the possibility for these patients to reproduce. Additionally, transgender people tend to start sex reassignment treatment at a young age, when reproductive wishes are not yet clearly defined nor fulfilled. The most recent Standards of Care of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend clearly informing patients regarding their future reproductive options prior to initiation of treatment. This chapter gives an overview of the current knowledge and state-of-the-art techniques in the field of fertility preservation for transgender people. Where gonadectomy definitely results in sterility, hormone therapy on the other hand also has an important, but partially reversible impact on fertility. The fertility preservation options for transgender women include the freezing of sperm collected through ejaculation or direct testicular extraction and the freezing of immature testicular tissue. Although certain fertility preservation techniques could be applicable in a standardized manner based on clear biological criteria, the technique that eventually will be performed should be the preferred choice of the patient after extended explanation of all possible options, and is highly dependent on the sex of the partner and national legislation.
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De Roo, C., T’Sjoen, G. (2018). Sperm Preservation in Transgender Patients. In: Majzoub, A., Agarwal, A. (eds) The Complete Guide to Male Fertility Preservation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42396-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42396-8_10
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