Preserving Fertility after Cancer Treatment

It is true that cancer is, in the main, a disease of middle age and the elderly. However, younger people, even pre-puberty juveniles, are not completely spared. Hodgkin’s Disease remains the commonest type of cancer in women aged 15 -24 years with excellent survival rates of well over 90%.

When cancer in a girl or young woman occurs, one of the difficult issues to contend with is the effect the treatment will have on that person’s fertility.

Cancer treatment takes the form of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. Sometimes it is a combination of all three.

All three forms of treatment can have effect on fertility. Moreover, the location of the cancer may very well be away from the reproductive organs but the treatment especially chemotherapy and radiotherapy could have the effect of making it difficult or impossible for the individual to retain fertility.

This is a broad subject and we have no intention of covering it all. We are therefore confining ourselves to recent developments in techniques to preserve fertility for girls treated for cancer.

Harvesting eggs before cancer treatment

For a woman already at a reproductive age and especially if in a relationship, it has been the norm for years to harvest eggs prior to starting treatment, getting them fertilized and implanting the resulting embryo(s) in the womb once she has the all-clear at a later date.

Preserving Unfertilized Eggs

Until a few short years ago, attempts to preserve unfertilized eggs almost always ended in failure with only a dismal 2% of them being successfully fertilized resulting in a live-birth afterwards. However, relatively recently, better methods of freezing (cryopreservation) unfertilized eggs have been successfully developed.

The story of the development of the new technique is that of man’s ingenuity in overcoming adversity. It was developed in Italy after the 2004 law banning the freezing of fertilized eggs (embryos) in that country.

The new method is still highly specialized and only available in a few centres around the world. To get the gist of the degree of challenge facing fertility experts, this method that is being hailed has a success rate of about 5 -6%! This means, out of a 100 frozen eggs, we can expect 5 or 6 live births. This may look dismal but it is a real scientific leap and from here on, things can only get better.

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