Make women with cancer aware of fertility options

Women with cancer in the UK are not being given enough information about the options for safeguarding their chances of having children after treatment, fertility experts have said.

Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Richard Anderson, professor of clinical reproductive science at the University of Edinburgh, and Melanie Davies, a consultant gynaecologist at University College London Hospitals, have raised concerns that patients are often unaware of the fertility options available to young women with cancer.

Infertility is often found to be the leading concern of young people with cancer. While men’s fertility can be preserved through freezing sperm samples, for women the options are more complex, involving the freezing of eggs, embryos or even tissue from the ovaries.

According to research from the UK charity Breast Cancer Care, 88 per cent of 176 women under the age of 45 who had breast cancer said they were not referred to a fertility specialist after being diagnosed.

The professors also highlighted that there are huge variations in the availability of the technologies, storage and funding methods around the country, with funding often being granted by commissioners on a case by case basis.

Anderson said: “There is a very sketchy provision – in some places it is quite well organised, in other places it is not. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) recommendation is that women [with cancer] should be aware of this and should be offered oocyte or embryo preservation, including adolescent girls. But the issue is that that doesn’t seem to have been established around the country by any means as yet.”