Fertility preservation in ovarian cancer patients

Abstract

Ovarian cancer is more frequent in post-menopausal women, however it can also occur in young premenopausal women. After diagnosis and cancer staging, health care providers should address the possibility of infertility and might offer fertility preservation options. Chemotherapy, frequently used when treating ovarian cancer, has proven to cause extensive ovarian damage. Standard surgery may be aggressive and the recurrence risk may not be relevant enough to opt for these approaches. Fertility sparing surgery has been progressively accepted and many alternative surgical approaches have proven to be successful in both cancer treatment, fertility preservation and low recurrence rates. Though there are several techniques available for fertility preservation in cancer patients, when dealing with ovarian cancer patients, oocyte and embryo cryopreservation are the only suitable. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation has been largely studied, but no data on ovarian cancer patients exist, due to the risk of reimplanting cancer cells.

摘要

卵巢癌在绝经后女性中更为常见, 但也可能发生在年轻的绝经前妇女。在诊断和肿瘤分期之后, 医务工作者应应对不孕的可能性, 并可提供生育力保护的选择。化疗, 通常用于治疗卵巢癌, 已经证明会引起严重的卵巢损害。标准手术是有侵袭性的, 复发风险可能与选择这些治疗措施无关。保留生育力手术已经逐渐被接受, 许多替代手术的治疗方法已经证明在肿瘤治疗、保护生育力和低复发率方面都是成功的。虽然目前肿瘤患者的生育力保护技术有很多, 但在卵巢癌患者中, 卵母细胞和胚胎冻存是唯一合适的方法。已经对卵巢组织冻存进行了大量研究, 但是由于癌细胞再植入的风险, 没有关于卵巢癌患者的数据。

Keywords:

• Ovarian neoplasms
• fertility preservation
• chemotherapy
• organ sparing treatments
• GnRH

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).