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Clinical outcome of embryo cryopreservation in Japanese breast cancer patients: pregnancy rates after transfer of thawed embryos

  • Fertility Preservation
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A Correction to this article was published on 31 August 2022

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Abstract

Purpose

To examine pregnancy outcomes after cryopreserved embryo transfer (ET) in breast cancer patients and to investigate the effect of controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH) as well as that of aromatase inhibitor (AI) administration and of the random start (RS) ovarian stimulation method.

Methods

This retrospective study covered 126 patients who underwent embryo cryopreservation between 2010 and 2019. Thirty-one patients underwent frozen embryo transfer (FET), and we examined resulting pregnancy rates (PRs) and live birth rates (LBRs) in those who did and did not undergo COH and in relation to the AI and RS methods.

Results

PR and LBR per patient were higher among patients who underwent COH than among those who did not. PR per ET did not differ from that documented for non-cancer infertility patients, after adjustment for age. The PR and LBR did not differ between use and non-use of AI (27.8% vs 35.2%). In addition, there was no significant difference in the PR or LBR between RS and conventional start ovarian stimulation (33.3% vs 30.8%). No prenatal fetal abnormalities were observed in 8 cases (including 5 AI cases and 2 RS cases).

Conclusions

This study showed that the outcome of FET after FP was equivalent to that seen in non-cancer patients. Further, neither use of AI nor the RS method influenced LBR. COH including use of AI and the RS method are useful in FP for collecting and freezing many embryos within a short period and for increasing the per patient LBR after cancer treatment.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the staff at St. Marianna University Hospital Reproductive Center for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, St. Marianna University School of Medicine, 2-16-11 Sugao, Miyamae, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

    Yuki Okutsu-Horage, Hideyuki Iwahata, Yuki Suzuki-Takahashi, Yodo Sugishita, Seido Takae & Nao Suzuki

Authors
  1. Yuki Okutsu-Horage
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  2. Hideyuki Iwahata
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  3. Yuki Suzuki-Takahashi
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  4. Yodo Sugishita
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  5. Seido Takae
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  6. Nao Suzuki
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nao Suzuki.

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Ethics approval

This retrospective study was approved by the research ethics committee of St. Marianna University School of Medicine.

Consent to participate

This study is a retrospective study. Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.

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Not applicable.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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The correct name of the 4th author is Yodo Sugishita instead of Yodo Sugisita.

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Okutsu-Horage, Y., Iwahata, H., Suzuki-Takahashi, Y. et al. Clinical outcome of embryo cryopreservation in Japanese breast cancer patients: pregnancy rates after transfer of thawed embryos. J Assist Reprod Genet 39, 1769–1777 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02575-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10815-022-02575-0

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