Cancer can make an appearance at any time of the life. Being devastating news regardless of age. In addition to being a cruel disease, the treatments and drugs that are used to treat cancer, have a series of side effects that can affect the quality of life of those who suffer from them in many ways.
Cancer treatments are aggressive, although necessary to kill cancer cells. The problem is that I am also very harmful to other areas, such as fertility. For this reason, many young women who have not yet become mothers wonder if they will be able to have children after fighting the disease. Fortunately, today there are preventive alternatives that make motherhood after cancer possible, we will tell you how.
The medical community is well aware of the problem posed by cancer treatment in young patients. especially women who have not yet been mothers. For this reason and fortunately, professionals in this sector are increasingly aware, offering preventive alternatives to young patients. It is therefore essential that patients receive the necessary information in this regard before starting treatment.
Fertility preservation techniques
In the case of men, the technique is really simple and is usually reported systematically. It is only necessary to freeze their sperm, obtained through a simple semen sample. But in the case of women it is more complicated. At present, there are three ways to preserve female fertility in case of aggressive treatments such as those used in cancer.
- Cryopreservation of embryos. This technique consists of freeze one or more embryos, with the aim of being used in the future. It consists of the extraction of eggs from the woman's ovary, which will be fertilized with sperm using in vitro techniques.
- Egg vitrification. Through this technique, eggs are obtained through ovarian stimulation. Once obtained, they are frozen through a specific process and kept for possible inseminations in the future.
- Ovarian tissue freezing. In this case, what is frozen is ovarian tissue. Obtaining the tissue is through the partial or total extraction of an ovary. Afterwards, the tissue that would be implanted in the other ovary would be thawed.
The most commonly used technique is egg vitrification for many reasons. Especially since they are usually young women, without a stable partner at the time of making the decision. In this way, the moment they want to be mothers, they can decide if they want to use a sperm donor or use their own partner's. In addition, many women do not want to freeze embryos for different reasons, all of them personal.
On the other hand, egg vitrification is a very effective female fertility preservation technique. The survival rate of frozen eggs using this technique, is very high, close to 100%.
Being a mother after cancer
Fortunately today it is possible to be a mother after overcoming cancer. Something that not many years ago was practically unthinkable. But for this to be possible, it is necessary that women receive all this information at the very moment they know they have cancer. It is essential to act as quickly as possible, so as not to interfere with the treatment of the disease.
If you find yourself in this situation, you should know that today the rate of women who overcome cancer is very high. But also, many of these women they become mothers after having overcome the disease. Assisted reproductive techniques are very advanced and this offers a very hopeful message for all those women who have to go through this ordeal.
Consult with your oncologist all the possibilities, ask him to inform you about the options you have to preserve your fertility and explain that you would like to have the possibility of being a mother once you have overcome cancer. In this way, both the specialist and yourself can act as far in advance as necessary.