Suzan Lenz
The Modern Laboratory · People
The Modern Laboratory
Suzan Lenz
She guided a needle by sound to reach the follicles, sparing women an operation to collect their eggs.
Copenhagen. Suzan Lenz worked in Copenhagen, in the Danish school of ultrasound that had grown up around Jens Bang and Hans Henrik Holm. In May 1981, with Jørgen Glenn Lauritsen and a colleague, she reported in The Lancet how eggs could be collected for IVF by a needle guided by ultrasound.
Through the bladder. The follicles were found with a scanner on the abdomen, and the needle passed through the abdominal wall and the full bladder into each one. In a 1982 report on 30 women, most were treated under local anaesthetic, and the only complication was brief blood in the urine in four. By 1984 she had used the method in 125 cycles, with women treated as outpatients, and had collected eggs in 80 per cent of them.
A wider practice. The Copenhagen team reported Denmark's first child born after IVF in 1983. Lenz later published with the Australian IVF pioneers John Leeton and Alan Trounson on ultrasound-guided egg collection and embryo transfer. In 1989 she gathered her IVF work in a long review in the Danish Medical Bulletin, from the Department of Diagnostic Ultrasound at Rigshospitalet. In the 1990s she turned her scanner to the testis, working with the reproductive medicine group at Rigshospitalet on testicular size, texture and the early signs of cancer.
A probe placed in the vagina would soon make the route shorter still. But the idea of finding the egg by sound, without an operation, was shown here.
Also see: Jens Bang, Alan Trounson, Pierre Dellenbach
About the sources
- Lenz S, Lauritsen JG, Kjellow M. Collection of human oocytes for in vitro fertilisation by ultrasonically guided follicular puncture. Lancet 1981;1(8230):1163–1164.
- Lenz S, Lauritsen JG. Ultrasonically guided percutaneous aspiration of human follicles under local anesthesia: a new method of collecting oocytes for in vitro fertilization. Fertility and Sterility 1982;38(6):673–677 (abstract: 30 patients, 18 under local anaesthesia, transient haematuria in four). Crossref metadata gives the authors' given names as Suzan and Jørgen Glenn.
- Lenz S. Ultrasonically guided aspiration of human oocytes. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology 1984;10(5):625–628 (125 cycles; out-patients; oocytes in 80% of cycles).
- Lauritsen JG, Lenz S, Lindenberg S. [A Danish child born after in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer]. Ugeskrift for Laeger 1983;145(51):3973–3976.
- Lenz S, Bang J. Transvesical/transuterine collection of oocytes by ultrasound. Journal of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer 1986;3(4):259–260.
- Lenz S, Leeton J, Rogers P, Trounson A. Transfundal transfer of embryos using ultrasound. Journal of In Vitro Fertilization and Embryo Transfer 1987; and Lenz S, Leeton J, Renou P. Transvaginal recovery of oocytes for in vitro fertilization using vaginal ultrasound. Same journal, 1987.
- Lenz S. In vitro fertilization treatment using ultrasonic guided puncture. Danish Medical Bulletin 1989;36(3):223–235 (Department of Diagnostic Ultrasound, Rigshospitalet).
- Lenz S, Giwercman A, Elsborg A, et al. Ultrasonic testicular texture and size in 444 men from the general population. European Urology 1993;24(2):231–238; Giwercman A, Lenz S, Skakkebaek NE. Carcinoma in situ in atrophic testis: biopsy based on abnormal ultrasound pattern. British Journal of Urology 1993.
- Campbell S. A short history of sonography in obstetrics and gynaecology. Facts, Views and Vision in ObGyn 2013;5(3):213–229 (Lenz “from Jens Bang's unit in Copenhagen”).
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
