Testicular cancer: preserve fertility

Testicular cancer is a rare type of tumor. In fact it accounts for only 1-2% of all cases of childhood cancer and 2% in adult adults. However, I must say that is the most common type of cancer in men aged between 15 and 35 years.

 

An important fact to note is that testicular cancer is one that has a higher cure rate of 90-95%, so the fact that the highest incidence of young that have not yet been able to raising the possibility of having children raises the need to preserve the fertility of the patient before starting treatment, for which there are different possibilities:

Surgery with removal of the affected testicle.

Radiotherapy.

Chemotherapy.

All of which affect fertility, in a way that can be temporary or permanent. Do not forget that both chemotherapy and radiation therapy affects both cancer cells and healthy cells, and sometimes cancer can affect both testicles, so that surgery alone can also generate a definitive infertility.

All this means that today raise oncologists patients the possibility of preserving their fertility, provided they are not prepubescent, a circumstance not given the option to do so.

In such cases we must previously make a study of fertility by performing a semen analysis and, depending on each case, other tests of sperm quality such as REM, Tunnel and called FISH. Do not forget that 3% of infertility patients already have at the time of diagnosis and that some risk factors associated with testicular cancer occur already infertility (for hypogonadism, feminization of the genital tract, etc.). However, it should be noted that some patients come to restore fertility after a year or two have been discharged after final treatment.

The fertility preservation is done by obtaining sperm cryopreservation and subsequent sperm banks authorized in order to be used in the future when the patient decides to become a father and want their children to be themselves. To this end three samples are needed and the process takes about ten days, and you should keep a sexual abstinence for two to three days prior to sample collection. In cases where you can not get the sample by masturbation you can use the technique of testicular sperm aspiration.

While there is no problem of absolute sterility, seminal cryopreservation ensures the possibility of future fatherhood patients with testicular cancer, since the technique of intracytoplasmic injection (ICSI) enough sperm to achieve fertilization of the oocyte and for this higher quality sperm will be selected by the different techniques currently available.