When young women are diagnosed with breast cancer, their fertility is a great concern, but they have little knowledge about what their choices are. This is according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The lack of information causes confusion and conflict around how to plan for cancer treatment and how to plan for a family.
“It’s generally accepted knowledge that cancer treatment as a whole can add 10 years to a woman’s reproductive age,” said Dr. Michelle Peate, PhD candidate leading a team from the University of New South Wales. “If a woman is diagnosed in her mid 30s, by the time she has completed her cancer treatment she may be in her 40s. And by that time it may be too late to fall pregnant.”
Without knowing what to do about their own fertility, the lack of information was likely to undermine the overall quality of decision making regarding treatment.
“The women we surveyed had relatively low levels of fertility-related knowledge. What’s more, there was a link between a lack of knowledge and feelings of conflict and uncertainty about the decisions they should be making,” explained Dr. Peate.
Women have different choices for their fertility before and after cancer treatment. Before treatment a woman can cryopreserve their own eggs or embryos. There may even be an option to cryopreserve ovary tissue. After chemotherapy, there is adoption, third party egg donation, surrogacy or taking a chance that fertility will return. “Much existing research has asked women to look back at their past experiences of a breast cancer diagnosis. . . they were not asked at the time of diagnosis and treatment. Although an unmet need for fertility information has been reported, until now it was not known whether this information was truly important at the time when women were making lots of life-changing decisions and dealing with all the emotions of a cancer diagnosis,” Dr. Peate concluded.
The report concludes that the information is important to give a cancer patient control over their life and confidence in all the decisions she makes. Dr. Peate and her team are working on an information pamphlet now for distribution to cancer centers.
Source: Journal of Clinical Oncology, ScienceDaily
