Episode 030: Your Fertility Options Before Treatment
Aug 16, 2018•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
When it comes to treating cancer, we rush into it as early as possible, and rightly so, you want to get rid of it, but it’s easy to miss something crucial and that’s where we need to talk about fertility. You want to make sure you’re clear about your options, even if you’re not thinking about having kids right now! To help you navigate the world of fertility and cancer, you’re going hear from Mahmoud, here is the expert in the field of oncofertility and is a representative of the Oncofertility Consortium. Here is what we cover in this conversation:
How awareness about cancer treatment can drive our choices
Saving your fertility before treatment
Breakthroughs in fertility preservation
Fertility tourism: new global phenomenon
and much, much more!
Links
Oncofertility Consortium
Save My Fertility
Reprotopia: Reproduction Education For All
Episode 009: Why The Oncologist Is Your Guide Through Cancer
Full Transcript
Joe: Mahmoud, there are so many treatments for cancer that they all affect people in a different way. When it comes to understanding the impact on fertility, it’s really important to be prepared, right?
Mahmoud: Yes, that’s right. I recommend that each patient who will receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy should know adequate information about the effect of the anti-cancer treatment on his/her fertility. The main issue in this topic is that the anti-cancer treatments have some side effects. Sometimes these side effects are very strong and dangerous regarding the fertility. That’s why some famous scientific organisations will classify the anti-cancer treatments regarding the risk on fertility into different categories.
To speak to patients, I always say that a cancer patient should at least have the awareness about the type of anti-cancer treatment she/he will get. I can just say, for example, as a start, the high-risk anti-cancer treatments should be known very well to the patients. This category contains total body irradiation, so the patient will receive radiation all over his/her body. Cranial irradiation, so radiation to the head. Or ionizing radiation to the pelvis that contains, in females, of course, the ovaries, or for the males, the testes. Or another type of chemotherapy, it’s called alkalating chemotherapy. These chemotherapies are very strong. They cause damage to the gonads. The gonads means ovaries in females or testes in male. This alkalating agents like cyclophosphamide or busulfan are also used in many cancers.
Or if the patient were to receive surgery including the removal or ovary in females or testes in males. These conditions are really important that the patient be aware of and he/she should know that in these conditions, there is a high risk of losing fertility, up to 80 percent. That’s why another measure should be provided to preserve fertility. From the other point of view, okay, this is the highly toxic, or highly gonadotoxic group of anti-cancer treatments, but when they are used, in females, the most common cancer that require aggressive anti-cancer treatment in females are breast or cervical cancers, or leukaemia, lymphoma, and central nervous system.
Any female patient that will suffer from breast cancer, cervical cancer, leukaemia, lymphoma, central nervous system, most probably will receive these aggressive anti-cancer treatments, and will be at risk for losing fertility. For males, the most common cancers are: testicular cancer, germ cell tumour, leukaemia, lymphoma, and central nervous system. Any male patient that will be diagnosed with these types of cancer, most probably will receive aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Then should receive also fertility preservation measures. This is just a summary or short account on the effect of anti-cancer treatments on fertility regarding female and male patients.
Joe: Yes, that’s fantastic, Mahmoud. Thank you for sharing that.
