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 Researchers focused on 346 women who were around 30 years old on
average and had typically finished cancer treatment about five years
earlier.
At the time participants completed the survey, 106 women said they
had been told they would not be able to become pregnant or carry a
baby to term as a result of their cancer treatment, and 21 women
said they had taken steps to preserve fertility before treatment
such as egg or embryo freezing.
Another 179 women said they maybe or definitely wanted children but
didn’t know their fertility status and hadn’t done anything to
preserve fertility.
“It is difficult to predict with certainty how any one woman’s
fertility will be affected by the cancer treatment she receives,”
said lead study author Dr. Catherine Benedict of Northwell Health in
Great Neck, New York.
“Many women will maintain fertility after treatment but will
experience menopause and infertility at an early age, with no
certainty about when this may occur,” Benedict added by email.
The most common diagnoses were lymphoma – tumors of the lymphatic
system that fights disease in the body, breast cancer, and leukemia
– malignancies of the bone marrow and blood-forming tissues.
Among the subset of women unsure about their fertility status,
almost two-thirds said they were concerned that they might not be
able to have children in the future, 41 percent reported it was
stressful to think about getting pregnant, and 59 percent were
worried about passing on a genetic risk for cancer.
At the same time, only 13 percent of these women believed they were
informed about their fertility preservation options, Benedict and
her coauthors - all from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in
New York City - report in the journal Cancer.
One limitation of the study is that it was done online and
researchers didn’t independently verify participants’ responses or
medical records, the authors note.
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Still, the findings underscore the importance of addressing
fertility issues so that cancer patients can make informed decisions
about their reproductive options, the authors conclude.
Before treatment, women should ask what is known about the drugs or
treatments they’re about to receive in terms of the likelihood of
damage to ovaries and eggs, said Dr. Kutluk Oktay, director of the
Innovation Institute for Fertility Preservation and IVF in New York.
Patients should also ask for a referral to a specialist who can
discuss the fertility implications of treatment and options to
preserve fertility, Oktay, who wasn’t involved in the study, added
by email.
“Depending on the patient’s age and available time as well as cancer
type, embryo, egg, or ovarian tissue freezing or a combination of
those can be offered,” he said.
Some patients may still not consider fertility preservation because
of concerns about the safety of delaying cancer treatment or due to
costs or lack of insurance coverage, Oktay noted. But women should
have all the facts before they decide.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1U75VMl Cancer, online May 23, 2016.
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