Young women with cancer do not take measures to preserve their fertility during treatment

MADRID, 26 ( EUROPA PRESS)

a study led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, has shown that young women who start a cancer treatment do not take steps to preserve their fertility, according to data published in the magazine ' Cancer ', of the American society of Oncology.

In United States are diagnosed each year more than 120,000 cases of cancer in less than 50 years and, because survival rates are improving, the quality of life is increasingly important.

However, the use of chemotherapy or other cancer treatments makes these women have more risk of losing fertility or suffer an early menopause, hence often advise these women of the existence of a wide range of assisted reproduction techniques to improve their chances of conceiving.

To know if these women make use of the different techniques of fertility that exist, Dr. Mitchell Rosen surveyed 1,041 women aged 18 to 40 who had diagnosed cancer between 1993 and 2007, including cases of leukemia, Hodgkin’s lymphoma and non-Hodgkin’s, breast cancer and gastrointestinal.

Of them all, a total of 918 were treated with therapies that could negatively affect their fertility (chemotherapy, radiotherapy pelvic, pelvic surgery, or bone marrow transplant).

Researchers found that 61 percent of these women received advice from their doctors or other health professionals about the risks that the cancer treatment could cause to their fertility, but only 4 percent chose to preserve it.

Study revealed, as preservation rates were increasing over time that, while only 1 percent started some technique of fertility in 1993, however, between 6 and 10 per cent opted for these therapies in 2005 and 2007.

Addition, certain groups of women were more likely to receive important information about your reproductive health at the time of his diagnosis of cancer and of preserving their fertility than others.

In particular, the study shows that women who have children, young, Caucasian, heterosexual and College were more likely to be counselled about these risks.

“while women are increasingly being more advised on the reproductive health risks, many still does not receive the appropriate information about their options at the time of the diagnosis”, explained Rosen.