Infertility Treatments
Fertility conservation in men
Every young man diagnosed with cancer has the inalienable right to gain direct access to the adequate services in order to maintain his fertility. It is both the oncologist’s obligation to inform her about the existence of such possibilities before starting treatment for cancer, and the reproductive physicians, to immediately enable him to freeze sperm or testicular tissue.
Treatment for cancer for men at a reproductive age can lead to temporary or permanent infertility. If it is a andrological cancer, it may require surgery to remove the tumor; however surgical removal of the testes, may also be necessary.
The options before starting treatment for cancer are:
- the freezing of sperm after ejaculation,
- the freezing of testicular tissue,
If you need to get treatment for cancer that can affect your fertility, you should get in touch with the special reproductive gynecologist and freeze sperm prior to starting the cancer treatments.
Freezing sperm is a very easy and extremely effective method of maintaining fertility in men. Frozen semen can be kept alive for many years and when unthawed lead to pregnancy with high success rates.
Semen collection takes place in the appropriate private space at the MITERA IVF unit.
If it is not possible to collect semen with masturbation (patient’s state of health, psychological reasons, etc.), then we are able to collect semen from the testis surgically, using a needle. This is called testicular biopsy and is performed at the MITERA IVF unit under mild sedation.
The semen collected in one way or another will be frozen at -196oC. This sperm will later be used in the IVF treatment using the ICSI method [link]. Approximately 25% -50% of sperm will survive the freezing process and can be stored for many years.
