What are fertility preservation benefits for patients diagnosed with cancer?

I would say that for these patients, fertility preservation gives them hope. This is the main advantage, the main benefit. Once we preserve our fertility it’s another way to see ourselves in the future which means that especially when the oncologist is the one who recommends fertility preservation to us, it means that the oncologist believes that we will be part of the future. So, once we are cured and we have already preserved our fertility, we will be able to proceed with a dream of motherhood or fatherhood and it is like to have this hope with us during the treatment steps and stages while fighting the cancer and once we are cured and back to normal, we will be able to go along with our lives, with the parent who dream included. So, we are claiming back our full life after whatever the cancer will produce in our life.

The benefits of fertility preservation for men and women diagnosed with cancer; there are many types of chemotherapy and radiation therapy that will sterilize both the male and the female, which would make them infertile in the future. So it’s important that we’re able to freeze the eggs or freeze embryos for women and freeze sperm for men prior to the chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Once the chemotherapy or radiation therapy has been initiated, many times we’re not able to obtain healthy eggs or healthy sperm after the treatment. And many times the male or female may go into sterilization due to chemotherapy, radiation therapy. So it’s very, very important that you have a conversation with your oncologist as soon as you make the diagnosis of cancer, and discuss fertility preservation. For single men and single women, the options are to freeze eggs, or freeze sperm. For women or men who are in relationships, the options at that point in time if they’re in a long-term relationship are to consider freezing embryos prior to the chemo or radiation treatment.

The benefits can be enormous. Obviously because depending on the type of cancer, it completely, as we say in “can wipe up their fertility potential”. Some cases if the radio, for example, or the chemotherapies it’s quite harsh to the testicular environment into the spermatogenesis – after the end of the treatment there can be cancer patients who have no sperm at all in their ejaculates and these patients they know they won’t be able to produce any sperm for the rest of their lives.
The benefits before a cancer patient starts the medical intervention are enormous because they can store sperm before they start the treatment and once they finish off the treatment, they can use that sperm in the future to go ahead for an Assisted Reproductive Technique and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to use it. There are other cases where, for example, the chemotherapy is not expected to have a severe effect on their facility so some patients, although they have stored sperm in the past, don’t need it after their medical intervention because their fertility hasn’t been greatly impacted.
Usually when a patient has been through cancer and have finished off the treatment, we say a year after, a patient stops the chemo-radiotherapy they go to the lab, they access the sperm again, they assess the semen quality and then they take things further in terms of if they need to use the frozen backup or not and also something that is very important for men to know and depending their country of residence as well – they need to check the legislation for how many years they can store the sperm. We have seen a cases where patients they didn’t keep contact with their lab, with the fertility lab, they had cancer, they have stored sperm before the initiation of the treatment, they were very young at the age so fathering a child wasn’t obviously on their mind and also by the fact that they had to deal with cancer fathering children wasn’t something that they would think and then they didn’t keep in touch with the fertility lab and after 10 years the lab have to dispose or to contact the patient and discuss obviously the opportunity to extend their consent for their to get a consent for the patient to extend the storage period. In some countries as I said that depends on the country I guess if the lab can’t keep contact with the patient and the consent of the storage has expired, they might have to discard the samples and if a patient has been through cancer and the chemo-radiotherapy was quite harsh, for example, for spermatogenesis – those patients end up having no sperm, no frozen backup to use and this is something that they need to take into account.
Store sperm before you start your cancer treatment and then always keep in touch with your facility lab after you finish off successful treatment.

The main issue with cancer treatments with chemotherapy or radiotherapy is the fact that these treatments are toxic to the ovaries.
So women that undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy have a high possibility to have no period. We call it after the end of the treatment, because of the toxicity of the medication or the radiation. That is the reason why we give these women a chance to freeze their eggs before starting treatment. So we can make sure that this toxicity will not affect the later family planning.

Benefit of fertility preservation for patients diagnosed with cancer is gives them the option of having their own genetic offspring in the future or at least gives them a hope of having their genetic offspring in the future.

Patients diagnosed with cancer benefit the most of the fertility preservation because we know that cancer treatment in the form of usually chemotherapy that’s the most important treatment used but also pelvic radiotherapy can affect ovarian reserve and can destroy oocytes within the ovaries and also sperm so the rationale behind the use of fertility preservation for these patients is to store gametes so they can use them later on and they still have a chance of having a pregnancy using their own gametes even if they have undergone premature menopause as a result of the treatment. That’s why it’s so important for all specialists involved in cancer treatment to refer patients quickly to fertility specialists to discuss this option with them.

Fertility preservation is the process of saving or protecting eggs, sperm or reproductive tissue in order to be able to use them to have biological children in the future. There are two main reasons for preserving fertility. Social reasons and medical reasons. Today I’m going to focus on medical reasons, specifically the benefits of fertility preservation for patients diagnosed with cancer.
It’s very important to take into account that a cancer patient may need to consider fertility preservation due to the risk of damage of sperm, eggs, ovaries or testicles as a result of the illness and also due to the treatment with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Moreover, some treatments can change the levels of hormones and cause early menopause, or damage in nerves or sexual organs. However, it is important to highlight that this infertility can be temporary or permanent.
Regarding to the male infertility, the treatments for cancer are focused on eliminating the tumor cells that are rapidly dividing. However, men have other cells that are very quick to divide, the sperm. That´s why the stem cells of the testicle are easy targets for the antitumor drugs. Moreover, during the cancer treatment there can be genetic changes in the sperm and it is recommended not to have babies during that period.
The benefits for those patients are significant, because with a very simple and fast procedure you can cryopreserve the semen or alternatively, the testicular tissue although this is still under investigation. It is very important to do that before starting the treatment in order to avoid genetic damage. So, men only have to collect a semen sample through masturbation and in the lab, we will freeze that sample.
Women under oncological treatments suffer a decrease in the ovarian reserve and this can cause early menopause and the inability to have a baby. For that reason, fertility preservation in women has enormous benefits. In that case, women have multiple alternatives to preserve fertility even though some of them are still in an experimental period. The most common is egg freezing but it is not adequate for all cancer patients because that procedure requires time, and some patients have to start the treatment immediately. Moreover, some tumors are hormone-dependent so the ovarian stimulation for the egg freezing can worsen the cancer. For that reason, there are other techniques like ovarian transposition, preservation of ovarian tissue, ovarian suppression or in vitro maturation of oocytes.
Therefore, it is highly recommended to oncological patients to ask for information from their doctor regarding fertility preservation and to determine the best option depending on the tumor, the stage of the cancer, location, the age of the patient and the fertility stage before the cancer treatment. This will increase the chances and, in some cases, will be the only option of having a biological child after overcoming cancer.

Certain types of cancer surgery can result in removal of organs needed for a pregnancy, and certain treatments might change hormone levels or cause damage to a female’s  and males reproductive cells. These effects result in losing their fertility during treatment that can be either temporary or permanent. These patients may choose to take steps that might help preserve their fertility so they can try to have a baby  after the  treatment.

The main benefit of fertility preservation for patients diagnosed with cancer is that those patients could have a child after treatment ends if they wish to. Currently, the incidence of cancer in the population is very high but so is the survival after the treatment, for example, breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among women and the survival is 85%. After the treatment, if they want to have kids, they will benefit from fertility preservation. The ideal option to preserve the fertility in women who start the chemotherapy treatment is oocyte vitrification since the radio and chemotherapy is cytotoxic for cancer cells and also for gametes but not always it is possible. Patients need authorisations from oncologists because they will be the one to confirm how urgently they need to start the treatment. Chemotherapy destroys oocytes because of the hormonal imbalance that occurs with treatment. Also destroys DNA and cells that surround the oocytes. The possible side effects of chemotherapy on fertility can be oligomenorrhea or amenorrhea, temporary or permanent which is permanent ovarian failure which occurs in more than 90% of the cases.
Often, the pregnancy after the cancer treatment is safe for both mother and baby. Pregnancy seems to not increase the risk of cancer coming back. Still some women may be recommended to wait a couple of months or years before trying to have a baby. How long it takes depends on several factors like the type of cancer, the type of treatment or a woman’s age.
Chemotherapy may affect the eggs that they were maturing during the treatment, if gametes were fertilised it could become the embryo with genetic abnormalities and either can be aborted or become a baby with genetic abnormalities. That’s why those patients are told to wait for a few months or years to have a baby.