Apr 18, 2009 9:14 am US/Eastern
Preserving Fertility After Cancer Treatment
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Chemotherapy increases the risk of infertility, a risk that can differ depending on age, medications, dosages and other factors. In vitro fertilization may preserve fertility while enduring such life-saving therapies.
In 1999, when Dr. Sandy Spender-Lacoursiere was only thirty years old, she had a visit to the doctor's office that changed her life.
"I had a visit with my gynecologist and he found a tumor in my right breast," Dr. Spender-Lacoursiere recalled.
Because Sandy was going to have chemotherapy, she knew that her fertility could be affected.
"Certain chemotherapy drugs are more toxic than others," explained Dr. Michael Jacobs of the Fertility and IVF Center of Miami. "Alkylating agents such as Cytoxan have been notoriously bad for a woman's reproductive function later in life."
There are drugs that have little risk and others that have medium to high risk. But there are ways to preserve fertility.
"The most ideal way is the ability to do in vitro fertilization prior to undergoing chemotherapy or radiation," explained Dr. Jacobs. "So that you're getting eggs out of the woman's ovary preferentially fertilizing them with her partner's sperm and preserving the embryos."
A second method for women who don't have a partner or donor sperm is egg freezing.
New babies that have been born from egg freezing or oocyte cryopreservation are still limited, in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of babies from IVF, or in vitro fertilization.
Oncologists also have to consider whether injecting hormones to harvest the eggs could make the cancer grow.
Dr. Jacobs added, "The type of breast tumor may affect how good an idea it is to treat someone with fertility drugs based on whether it is estrogen and progesterone receptor positive or not."
Even though Sandy didn't have time to take fertility steps, her story still has a happy ending. When she finished treatment at the end of 2000, she discovered she was pregnant.
In April 2001, she delivered fraternal twins, A.J. and Allison.
She bemused, "I dont get it either. Some things are just not meant to be understood."
For more information on breast cancer, log on The Susan G. Komen For The Cure.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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