Fertility Preservation for Cancer Patients | Cincinnati Children's

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FERTILITY PRESERVATION

If you’ve just been diagnosed with cancer, you might have a lot of things running through your mind. One thing you may not have considered is fertility preservation. This is the process of protecting your child’s ability to have children after their cancer therapy. It is important to think about this before cancer treatment begins. The Cincinnati Children’s Fertility Preservation Team can help walk you through these decisions.

Our body’s sperm and egg cells are vulnerable to cancer treatment. Fertility preservation is the process of collecting and protecting a few of your sperm or egg cells so they are not damaged during cancer treatment.

Many parents might believe that their child is too young to understand what fertility means, or feel that they don’t need to worry about something like this with a young child. However, most people start from birth with the ability to have children.

Information on fertility preservation comes from your Fertility Preservation Team! This team consists of a Fertility Navigator, a Pediatric Oncologist, a Pediatric Gynecologist for girls or Urologist for boys. Their job is to educate their patients and families, as well as carry out the different procedures. They are also there to answer any questions before, during, and after your cancer treatment. For young children, the choice to undergo fertility preservation lies with a parent or guardian, but teenagers and young adults can help make the decision after learning all of the facts. The Fertility Preservation team members work closely with families and their primary oncologist to determine the most effective route of treatment.

A good way to visualize how treatment will affect a cancer patient’s fertility is to imagine fertility as a spectrum.

The spectrum includes four different factors that all play a role in determining the procedure options and the risk of infertility.
- Chemotherapy can affect the risk of infertility depending on which medications are used and how much of each medication is necessary for your child’s cancer.
- The patient's age will play a role because as patients get older, their risk of infertility increases. There are also more procedure options once a patient has gone through puberty.
- The timing of cancer therapy can effect the different preservation options, and it depends on how much time there is before the cancer patient’s first treatment. This is due to the fact some procedures take longer to complete than others.
- Whether you are a boy or girl will determine the types of cells that are needed to be frozen to preserve fertility. For boys, they can freeze sperm cells or testicular tissue and for girls, they can freeze eggs, embryos, or ovarian tissue.

The process of freezing these cells at an extremely cold temperature is called CRYOPRESERVATION, and the cells can be stored for up to years at a time, until they are needed.

Its important to plan for life after cancer and fertility preservation can allow the patient to have the choice on whether or not to have their own children. The whole care team is here to help. Don’t be afraid to ask your fertility preservation team members and oncology providers about any concerns you may have.