Women received less information about fertility preservation

Issue: July 25, 2012

A small study is the second recently published to indicate that young men diagnosed with cancer received more information and are more likely to undergo fertility preservation, such as sperm banking, than young women who receive a cancer diagnosis.

This study, which examined perceptions and use of fertility preservation, included 16 men and 18 women aged 16 to 44 years who were receiving treatment for hematology-related or other cancers — including breast and ovarian cancers — between August 2008 and June 2010. The study involved 15 health professionals.

Topics such as perceptions of diagnosis, future reproductive choices and quality of fertility information received were discussed during audio-recorded interviews, and researchers analyzed the discussion topics according to themes.

Results indicated that men and women received different information about fertility preservation options. Although men — even those with families — were actively encouraged to store sperm, few women could remember being told about fertility options.

Health care professionals listed several reasons for withholding information about fertility, including a belief that cancer treatment would not affect future fertility, that options for women were unreliable, and that cancer treatment was too urgently needed to delay for fertility preservation.

“Staff made it plain during interviews that they would feel justified in actively helping patients to make what they believed to be the ‘right’ decision, despite being unsure of fertility preservation techniques available locally,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers acknowledged that a study of this size cannot be generalized to a wider population, but they thought the findings might be relevant in other areas of the world were people have limited access to oncology services.

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Source:

Peddie VL. BJOG. 2012;doi:10.1111/j.1471-0528.2012.03368.x.