Women of childbearing age and men battling cancer, will sadly find that their infertility is affected due to cancer treatment.
Cancer treatment can affect fertility in a number of ways although it largely depends on the age, type of medication used, type of cancer and target area for chemotherapy or radiation.
Infertility can be permanent or temporary although it can never be determined how soon it will be restored.
This is why women and men diagnosed with cancer have been preserving their fertility. Women are freezing embryos, having parts of their ovaries frozen or take a hormone which puts their ovaries into temporary menopause, while men are doing sperm banking, which simply involves collecting a sample of semen and freezing it.
I learnt as recently as yesterday, on a local newscast, that there seem to be a new drug that can be administered to women at the time of their cancer treatment, which also freezes the ovaries until cancer treatment is completed so that later when a woman decides to have children, her ovaries will be unaffected by her cancer treatment, making it possible and safe to conceive.
Apparently this finding is very new because I was not able to find any further information online. I will continue to check, so stay tuned for more on this.
The more we know.....
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