Few young women with cancer take steps to preserve fertility during treatments
A new study has found that very few young women with cancer take steps to preserve their fertility while undergoing cancer therapy. Also, certain groups of young women are more likely to do so than others. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that efforts are needed to provide counseling on fertility preservation in reproductive-aged women diagnosed with cancer.
More than 120,000 women under 50 years of age are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States. As cancer survival rates are improving, quality of life issues are becoming increasingly more relevant. For example, chemotherapy and other cancer therapies often increase a woman's risk of becoming infertile and experiencing early menopause, and a woman may regret losing the ability to bear children because of her cancer treatment. With widely available assisted reproductive techniques such as egg or embryo freezing, women who have been diagnosed with cancer have options to improve their chances of conceiving.
To find out which women are taking advantage of these fertility-preserving techniques, Mitchell Rosen, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), led a team that surveyed 1,041 women diagnosed with cancer between the ages of 18 and 40 years. Five cancer types were included: leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, breast cancer, and gastrointestinal cancer. The women were randomly sampled from the California Cancer Registry from 1993 to 2007. A total of 918 women were treated with therapies that could negatively affect their fertility (chemotherapy, pelvic radiation, pelvic surgery, or bone marrow transplant).
The investigators found that 61 percent of women received counseling on the risks of cancer treatment to their fertility from their doctors or other clinicians. Overall, only four percent of women pursued fertility preservation, but rates increased over time. (Only one percent pursued fertility preservation in 1993, compared with between six percent and 10 percent in 2005 to 2007.) Also, certain groups of women were more likely to receive important information about their reproductive health at the time of their cancer diagnosis and were also more likely to preserve their fertility than others.
Women who are childless, younger, Caucasian, heterosexual, and who graduated from college are more likely than women of other backgrounds to be counseled about the risks of cancer treatment to fertility or to preserve fertility before cancer treatment.
"Although more women are getting counseled regarding reproductive health risks, many women are still not receiving adequate information about their options at the time of cancer diagnosis," said Dr. Rosen. "Routine counseling regarding reproductive health risk and options for preserving reproductive potential will improve the quality of life among survivors, and the overall quality of care."
The authors concluded that socio-demographic health disparities likely affect access to fertility preservation services. "An opportunity lies ahead to explore educational and policy interventions to ameliorate health disparities that may exist in the growing use of fertility preservation," said Dr. Rosen.
Provided by
Wiley
-
Breast cancer patients lack adequate fertility preservation advice
Nov 07, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study shows greater impact of chemotherapy on fertility
Aug 25, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Fertility issues in young women with breast cancer must be addressed
Mar 24, 2010 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Radiation oncologists are discussing infertility risks with young cancer patients
Mar 08, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
'Poor' knowledge about breast cancer and fertility
Apr 04, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
How can there be a term called "intestinal metaplasia" of stomach
13 hours ago
-
Pressure-volume curve: Elastic Recoil Pressure don't make sense
May 18, 2013
-
If you became brain-dead, would you want them to pull the plug?
May 17, 2013
-
MRI bill question
May 15, 2013
-
Ratio of Hydrogen of Oxygen in Dessicated Animal Protein
May 13, 2013
-
Alcohol and acetaminophen
May 13, 2013
- More from Physics Forums - Medical Sciences
More news stories
Small cancer risk following CT scans in childhood and adolescence confirmed
The gap between life expectancy in patients with a mental illness and the general population has widened since 1985 and efforts to reduce this gap should focus on improving physical health, suggest researchers in a paper ...
Cancer
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Changing cancer's environment to halt its spread
By studying the roles two proteins, thrombospondin-1 and prosaposin, play in discouraging cancer metastasis, a trans-Atlantic research team has identified a five-amino acid fragment of prosaposin that significantly reduces ...
Cancer
2 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Novel RNA-based classification system for colorectal cancer
A novel transcriptome-based classification of colon cancer that improves the current disease stratification based on clinicopathological variables and common DNA markers is presented in a study published in PLOS Medicine this w ...
Cancer
3 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Low radiation scans help identify cancer in earliest stages
A study of veterans at high risk for developing lung cancer shows that low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) can be highly effective in helping clinicians spot tiny lung nodules which, in a small number of patients, may indicate ...
Cancer
4 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Poliovirus vaccine trial shows early promise for recurrent glioblastoma
An attack on glioblastoma brain tumor cells that uses a modified poliovirus is showing encouraging results in an early study to establish the proper dose level, researchers at Duke Cancer Institute report.
Cancer
6 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
New sleeping pill poised to hit US markets
An experimental sleeping pill from US drug company Merck is effective at helping people fall and stay asleep, according to reviewers at the US Food and Drug Administration, which could soon approve the new drug.
If you can remember it, you can remember it wrong
(Medical Xpress)—Native peoples in regions where cameras are uncommon sometimes react with caution when their picture is taken. The fear that something must have been stolen from them to create the photo ...
Reducing caloric intake delays nerve cell loss
Activating an enzyme known to play a role in the anti-aging benefits of calorie restriction delays the loss of brain cells and preserves cognitive function in mice, according to a study published in the May ...
B vitamins could delay dementia
(Medical Xpress)—Despite spending billions of dollars on research and development, drug companies have been unable to come up with effective treatments for dementia and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Now, A. ...
Antidepressant reduces stress-induced heart condition
A drug commonly used to treat depression and anxiety may improve a stress-related heart condition in people with stable coronary heart disease, according to researchers at Duke Medicine.
Insight into the dazzling impact of insulin in cells
Australian scientists have charted the path of insulin action in cells in precise detail like never before. This provides a comprehensive blueprint for understanding what goes wrong in diabetes.