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Infertile patients cannot afford to wait for treatment while their eggs get older.

Dr. Sherman Silber, Infertility Center of St. Louis, is offering video consultations for patients who need to plan now for their treatment while stay-at-home orders are in place. He is talking to and evaluating patients in their home to comply with social distancing measures.

Dr. Silber is discovering that patients actually prefer this method of telemedicine consultation over the conventional office visit. Patients have conveyed that “it is so much more convenient and less stressful” to have a telemedicine personal consultation than to take a day off from work to travel to the doctor’s office and sit with other nervous patients in the waiting room.

The COVID-19 pandemic is thus changing much of the way we will do things in the future, and for the better. “Our patients are surprisingly much happier with this approach. Of course, at some point we need to perform hands on treatment. But with this new manner of seeing patients, we can come to the right diagnosis and treatment plan for most patients more efficiently, quickly, and painlessly, with no loss of personal one-on-one communication.” This is a very welcome new era of telemedicine that has been forced on us by the current difficult times.

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The Infertility Center of St. Louis
The Infertility Center of St. Louis
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Ovary Tissue vs Egg Freezing: Jana’s Story at the Infertility Center of St. Louis (Part 6)

Episode 6 of Jana’s eight-part fertility-preservation series shifts focus from elective egg freezing to a life-saving option for oncology patients: ovarian-tissue cryopreservation. Conversing with Dr. Sherman J. Silber in the lab at the Infertility Center of St. Louis, Jana learns why this approach can eclipse egg freezing when cancer treatment can’t wait.

Dr. Silber explains that standard egg retrieval requires 10-14 days of hormonal stimulation—time many patients diagnosed with leukemia, lymphomas, or aggressive breast cancers simply do not have before starting chemo or radiation. Ovarian-tissue freezing, by contrast, is completed in a single outpatient laparoscopy that removes a cortical strip rich in primordial follicles—approximately 200,000 eggs—without the need for hormonal delay. The tissue is rapidly vitrified, using the same glass-like technique highlighted in Episode 4, and stored in the clinic’s FDA-approved biometric cryovault.

Years later, once the patient is in remission, surgeons re-implant thin slices of the tissue beneath the skin of the remaining ovary or inside the forearm. Within three to four months the graft revascularizes, resumes natural hormone production, restores regular menstrual cycles, and—most critically—allows conception through intercourse rather than IVF. Over 200 healthy births worldwide affirm its efficacy; Dr. Silber’s team was among the first in the United States to deliver live-birth outcomes from this method.

Jana and Dr. Silber discuss tailoring strategies: combining egg freezing for immediate embryo-based insurance with ovarian-tissue banking for broader endocrine and fertility restoration. They emphasize the technique’s special value for pre-pubertal girls—who cannot produce mature eggs—as well as women with BRCA mutations facing prophylactic oophorectomy.

The episode closes on a hopeful note: modern cryobiology now offers cancer patients more than survival—it grants the prospect of a naturally conceived family and normalized hormonal health, turning a dire diagnosis into a detour rather than a dead end.