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Reproductive technologies prevent infertility in cancer patients

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We had a grand rounds lecture last week about male infertility treatment options for cancer survivors. I really enjoy these survivorship lectures because they focus on cured patients — what a great feeling! In this lecture we talked about sperm banking, sperm retrieval via testicular and seminal vesicle aspirations (ouch!) and sperm donation. He also talked about ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection), IUI (intra-uterine insemination) and a veritable alphabet soup of reproductive technologies. On the horizon is testicular tissue transplantation once a patient has completed all his treatment, but this sounded pretty far in the distance. Super cool stuff.

I also saw that ASCO News recently had a story on improving methods of fertility preservation via oocyte freezing for girls who need to undergo cancer treatments. Acknowledging that not all assistive reproductive technology has a 100% success rate, I am still left to this: how nice that conceiving a child is one less thing that cancer can potentially take away.