Oncofertility refers to preserving a young woman’s fertility when she needs to go through potentially egg-damaging chemotherapy for cancer.
Neelima Denduluri, a breast medical oncologist at Virginia Hospital Center, “chemo is a real risk to fertility.” Certain regimens, she says, “are more likely to cause infertility and decreasing of sperm count,” with up to 80 percent of patients affected, with exact rates depending on the type of cancer treatment and age at diagnosis.
Despite this, medicine has come a long way recently toward helping cancer patients — women especially — preserve fertility prior to treatment.
The most common and successful option for a woman with cancer is freezing an egg or embryo before undergoing chemotherapy or radiation. Once the patient decides she is ready to get pregnant, she is given estrogen and progesterone to prepare the lining of the uterus. The embryo is then thawed (or the egg is inseminated) and transferred into the uterus.
About 140,230 Americans younger than 45 will receive a cancer diagnosis this year, the American Cancer Society projects. The large majority of them are likely to survive for five years or more.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine lifted the experimental designation for egg freezing in October, thanks to improved success rates with a new flash-freezing technology known as vitrification.
Hopefully more oncologists will discuss fertility preservation with their young patients, both men and women, needing chemotherapy.
Reproductive Partners is pleased to be able to offer fertility preservation to cancer patients and cooperates with Fertile Hope, an organization which helps make egg freezing for cancer patients less costly.