Cancer Treatments and Fertility

• Most chemotherapy (chemo) drugs can damage women’s eggs and men’s sperm affecting their fertility. This depends on the patient’s age, the types of drugs, and the drug doses, making it hard to predict if a patient is likely to be fertile after chemo.
• Radiation treatments use high-energy rays to kill cancer cells. These rays can also damage the reproductive organs.
• Women getting pelvic radiation will lose their fertility by destroying some or all of the eggs in the ovaries and might cause early menopause,
• Cancer Treatments can also destroy sperm cells and the stem cells that make sperm.
• Surgery for cancers of the reproductive organs and pelvic cancers (such as the bladder, colon, prostate, and rectal cancer) can damage these organs and/or nearby nerves or lymph nodes in the pelvis, leading to infertility.

If you wish to have children after completing your treatment, it’s important to speak to a fertility specialist before undergoing any cancer treatments.

 

By Dr. Zakwan Khrait
Specialist Reproductive Medicine And Infertility