Can I become pregnant if I was sick with acute myeloid leukemia 11 years ago? What are the risks?

I want to use donor oocytes to minimize the hormonal burden on my body. But even with my eggs, pregnancy is rather impossible because I do not have my menstruation after high-dose therapy before autologous bone marrow transplantation. I have been taking hormone replacement therapy since 2005. There is no statistics of successful pregnancy after long-term remission of leukemia. And what I must do I do not know. It is very hard to feel healthy and be aware that I will never become a mother.

Answers from doctors (1)


Piedmont Reproductive Endocrinology Group

Published on Aug 06, 2015

You are correct in that if you have undergone menopause early because of prior chemotherapy that donor egg IVF will be required and you cannot use your own eggs because there are very few remaining and they will not be responsive to ovarian stimulation. In donor egg IVF the recipient (you) of the embryos has her endometrium synchronized with the egg donor and we use hormones (estrogen and progesterone) to develop your endometrium as if you had actually ovulated the eggs yourself. We then transfer embryos created from the donor eggs and your partners sperm and transfer 1-2 of them back into your uterine cavity. You would require clearance from your leukemia doctors to attempt pregnancy before any of this could be performed. There are IVF centers throughout the US which could help with this.

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Answered by Piedmont Reproductive Endocrinology Group

You are correct in that if you have undergone menopause early because of prior chemotherapy that donor egg IVF will be required and you cannot use your own eggs because there are very few remaining and they will not be responsive to ovarian stimulation. In donor egg IVF the recipient (you) of the embryos has her endometrium synchronized with the egg donor and we use hormones (estrogen and progesterone) to develop your endometrium as if you had actually ovulated the eggs yourself. We then transfer embryos created from the donor eggs and your partners sperm and transfer 1-2 of them back into your uterine cavity. You would require clearance from your leukemia doctors to attempt pregnancy before any of this could be performed. There are IVF centers throughout the US which could help with this.

Published on Jul 11, 2012


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