Zaraq Khan, M.B.B.S. , chair of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and a minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, reviews an article he and colleagues published in the April 2020 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The paper offers options for fertility preservation in transgender individuals who may want to retain the ability to have children.
Mm hmm. We talk about fertility preservation options in this review article because we believe that that is a very important part of the overall medical care for a transgender individual. My name is Sara Khan, and I'm the interim chair of the reproductive endocrinology and Infertility Division, as well as have a joint appointment with minimally invasive gynecologic surgery in the department of O B G. Y n at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. One of my primary interests include fertility preservation for CIS, gender, females and transgender patients. Today I'll be talking about our review article Fertility Preservation for transgender individuals. To me, this article holds a special place in my heart because we've been very recently involved with our transgender clinic at the Mayo Clinic, working with people from the l. G. B. T. Q. I A population has given us a new sense of direction to fight for the rights of the transgender individuals in our community in our society and making sure that they get similar rights to CIS gender. People having the ability to have biological Children even after gender affirmation procedures is exceedingly important, and we know that newer studies globally are showing more and more of the importance of that principle, and it is also highlighting how that principle has been ignored for so many years. That is why we felt that it was very timely to come out with a review article explaining to all our colleagues across various fields of medicine in trying to explain to them what different techniques are available for fertility preservation in transgender individuals. Our goal was to start working with the transgender clinic at Mayo Clinic, and that was a very unique and eye opening experience for us. We saw that truly transgender individuals were never asked questions about fertility preservation or potential childbearing or having biological Children in the future. This is why we felt that this article was very timely and very important not just for O B G Y N s, but also for people from different fields of medicine. At Mayo Clinic in our transgender clinic, we have a multidisciplinary group of people, all the way from surgery to medical oncology to pediatric endocrinology, as well as to medical endocrinology and reproductive endocrinology. And our goal for this review article was to try and put all those thoughts together of various ways for fertility preservation for the transgender patient. In this paper, we cover not only transgender adults but also trans boys and trans girls. That could be very challenging discussions to have we in this paper go over various important ways that we can have fertility preservation. For example, For trans women, the biggest, most common way of fertility preservation would be semen cryopreservation. But we also talk about various other unique techniques that can be used for trans girls that are pre puberty, all likewise for trans men. We also talk about egg freezing or ovarian tissue freezing, and similarly, we also talk about trans boys and different options that we can provide to those that are pre pube. It'll, in my opinion, the most important and interesting part of this article is not just the science and the various techniques that have been described. I think what's also important is how these gametes that our cryo preserved can be used in the future. We have tables in this paper that show future use for gametes. If the transgender individual has a male or a female partner, or maybe the transgender individual wants to be a single parent, All these options have been described in this paper and truly what I tell my trainees in the year 2020. There is 20,000 ways of building a family, and I think when you read this paper, you will understand and know how the different ways are present there for all our patients, including transgender patients for fertility preservation for the future. We hope you found this presentation from the content of our website valuable. Our journals mission is to promote the best interests of patients by advancing the knowledge and professionalism of the physician community. If you are interested in more information about us, our homepage is www dot mayo clinic proceedings dot org. There you will find access to information for our social media content, such as additional videos on our YouTube channel or journal updates on Facebook. You can also follow us on Twitter. More information about health care. Mayo Clinic is available at www dot mayoclinic dot org. This video content is copyrighted by mail Foundation for medical education and research
