Fertility warnings for cancer patients

According to an interesting article in the New York Times, it seems that many cancer patients are still not being warned about the risks treatment can pose to their fertility.

The paper reports that many patients don't think to ask about this during consultations, and that specialists often forget to tell them in the rush to start treatment. One study estimated that only 1/4 of specialists told patients that their cancer treatment could mean they would not be able to have children. In the US, a new programme has just started to help cancer patients who are worried about their future fertility.

It is surprising that even now many people are unaware that infertility is a fairly common side effect of cancer treatments. If the risks are explained before treatment starts, there is often a window of opportunity to freeze sperm or eggs before it begins. The chances of a successful pregnancy with frozen eggs are still low, but this is a rapidly changing field and this is certain to improve in the not too distant future.

Is ovarian tissue freezing for cancer patients safe?

When women who would still like to have children discover they have cancer, they are often offered the option of freezing eggs or ovarian tissue for use in the future, in order to preserve their fertility which is often destroyed by the cancer treatment regimes.

Now, a team of Israeli researchers have raised questions as to whether this could lead to women being re-infected if the tissue isn't properly screened before it is returned to the woman's body. They suggest that very few fertility clinics have the expertise to screen ovarian tissue properly to ensure that this can't occur, and have concluded that proper testing is necessary before tissue is put back into the body if doctors want to eliminate that risk.

The Israeli research has been published in the journal Human Reproduction