Endocrine Abstracts

Objective: The diagnosis of premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is a traumatic event for many patients that involves poor fertility prognosis. After such diagnosis spontaneous pregnancies are rare. The alternatives for building a family are oocyte donation, embryo donation and adoption. However, we have few information on how many women with POI finally built a family after the diagnosis and which alternative they chose.

Design: We performed a cross-sectional, descriptive study.

Methods: We conducted a survey of all the women who consulted for POI in the department of endocrinology and reproductive medicine at la Pitié Salpêtrière between 31/05/1991 and 12/01/2021. We included patients who continued to be followed up regularly by our department or were contacted by mail or phone between June and September 2021. We excluded patients with Turner syndrome, POI secondary to oncological treatment and patients under 18 at the time of the survey.

Results: 324 women with POI were analysed. Mean follow-up time between the first assessment in the service and the survey was 8,1 years. 41% of the women who wanted to build a family had children after the diagnosis: 53,9% by oocyte donation 1 woman by embryo donation, 5,6% after ovarian stimulation, 13,5% adopted and 25,8% had spontaneous pregnancy after a mean time of 2,5 years. Spontaneous pregnancy rate was 8,6% in the whole cohort.

Conclusions: Having children after a diagnosis of POI is not uncommon, but more often results from oocyte donation. This study will provide enlightened information for newly diagnosed women on the possibilities to build a family after POI diagnosis.