Why should fertility preservation be a priority for my child?

A child with a cancer diagnosis and their parents, and grandparents, and friends, form a real information unit. And they’re trying to get as much information about the effect of the treatment on their child as they can. And it turns out that fertility now is one of those questions that many parents are asking about the consequences of the treatment on that child.

And we did a focus group study on adult survivors of childhood cancer and their parents, and these adult survivors were diagnosed and treated for cancer between 13 years of age and 18 years of age, and now they’re in their 20s. And in fact the parents said that if there were some option for them when the child was diagnosed to preserve that individual’s fertility, they would have opted for that. And so the information they would have needed would have been to talk with a parent or survivor of cancer who now had gone through the treatment and was facing fertility complications.

And so one of the reasons we’ve put this Web site together is to in fact provide that informed information to parents, to young adults, to the family unit, to try and provide information about how that cancer treatment is going to impact fertility. And what options are currently available, and we’ll be updating all of this information so that as newer options come online, we can provide the most authoritative information on fertility options based on your age and your sex, so that you can actually take control of the cancer diagnosis, and ensure that when you survive that disease, you can return to a healthy lifestyle that includes the possibility for you to maintain fertility.