Until recently there were no good options for preserving a woman's fertility when she had to go through cancer treatments which could potentially destroy her ferrtility. In the past several years egg freezing has become a viable option. The question that had not been answered was if the cancer itself was likely to have altered their fertility even before cancer treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy.
Now a study in the July 2011 issue of the medical journal, Fertility & Sterility, provides reassurance that on an age-related basis, cancer sufferers' fertility potential is not different than women going through IVF for male factor infertility. The author found no difference in ovarian reserve, response to fertility drugs, numbers of eggs retrieved and egg maturity between the two groups. These parameters remain unaltered by the neoplastic process. This is in contrast to the impairment of spermatogenesis before therapy in men with cancer,