New expert in family planning department Bonn doctors help childless couples
Bonn · Professor Nicole Sänger is the new Head of Reproductive Medicine at the University Hospital of Bonn. As director of her specialist area, she now heads a team of 21 employees.
Those who come to Nicole Sänger often have been through a lot already. The attempts to start a family. The realization that it didn't work out. Again. The doctor listens first. Often for a whole hour. Because people have a lot to tell. Sometimes about previous illnesses (such as endometriosis or fibroids) which torpedo and destroy the wish to have children, sometimes about the search for reasons for seemingly inexplicable disappointments, fears and great expectations.
"Usually the couples sit in pairs in front of me to describe their situation. I very much welcome this, because the desire to have children is something that concerns both of them," says the new professor for gynaecological endocrinology (the study of hormones) and reproductive medicine at Bonn University Hospital (UKB).
The Frankfurt woman brought her laboratory manager with her from there. As director in her field, she now leads a team of 21 doctors, medical assistants, medical-technical assistants, secretarial staff and biologists. Her staff prepared the new boss for her debut on the Venusberg what she calls a "friendly and benevolent welcome from the Rhineland". Until she moved to Bonn, the woman from Frankfurt was in charge of reproductive medicine at the University Hospital in her hometown. She also guided her laboratory director there to the Rhine.
"It is the small gestures of the staff here that made my arrival easier," says the 44-year-old. Because the self-confessed team player often has to make do without her domestic team at the moment. The family - her husband (also a doctor) and the two school-age children - still live in Frankfurt am Main, a complete move to Bonn is planned for this year.
The physician is also making an effort to give her patients a friendly welcome. She offers them biscuits in the conference room as nourishment for their nerves. She knows from experience: Usually, it is the men who take a biscuit. Because the conversations are exhausting.
Sänger arranges examinations with their patients to find out why a wish to have children has not been fulfilled. These include, among other things, the spermiogram of the man, various hormone, fallopian tube and thyroid examinations of the woman. Many medical disciplines are involved: andrology (male medicine), urology, human genetics, psychosomatics.
"Not every couple needs artificial insemination"
When the results are available, the individual therapy follows. "We work according to the one-doctor-a-patient principle," explains Sänger. This means that the couples do not have to constantly adapt to new conversation partners. An expert should coordinate and bundle the treatment plan. This can range from monitoring the female cycle, hormone stimulation and better thyroid gland control to intrauterine insemination (semen transfer directly into the uterus) and in vitro fertilisation.
"We only do as much as is really necessary," says Sänger. "The fact that we are a fertility centre does not mean that every couple needs artificial insemination. The goal is a natural pregnancy," explains the fertility expert. If necessary, scientific and medical support is available.
In the case of success, the doctors' intervention ends in the patient's seventh or eighth week of pregnancy. "If the first heart sounds of the child can be recorded, our work is done, then the established gynaecologists take over.“ And when there is bad news, Nicole Sänger doesn't shy away from telling the truth straight out either.
In some cases she has to tell her counterparts that the wish for a child of her own is very unlikely to come true. "Sometimes it takes two or three conversations before that information gets through to the patients and it can lead to deep disappointments," says the doctor. There is a psychologist in the house who can call be called in for these cases.
"Of course, we can't conjure away the pain. The unwanted childlessness sometimes leads couples into situations that are difficult to cope with. Often it's simply a matter of coping with the situation together," explains the professor.
This probably also applies to her second specialty: Maintaining fertility in girls and women after successful cancer treatment. Of course, the patients or - in the case of children - their parents have other concerns at the time of diagnosis. "It's all about survival. This is precisely why we doctors should not lose sight of the future, but open up perspectives for a later wish to have children," says Sänger.
According to the doctor, the cure rate for malignant cancer in children is over 80 percent thanks to modern medicine. While until a few years ago life-saving therapy almost automatically led to the sterility of the treated person, today there is in many cases the possibility of a later pregnancy.
For this purpose, ovarian tissue is removed from the patient before chemotherapy begins and frozen in nitrogen tanks. The UKB has a lot of experience in this field, as it has the largest university cryobank for storing the tissue to date. "We want to show children and their parents, but also affected adults, the hope that it will continue," says Sänger.
(Original text: Margit Warken-Dieke / Translation: Mareike Graepel)
