The goal of the Fertility Preservation Program at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center is to protect the fertility of patients being treated for cancer or blood disorders. Learn more about fertility preservation options for female pediatric patients .
Yeah, Fertility preservation is our effort here at Dana Farber Boston Children's Hospital to maintain fertility and our patients who are seeing treatment for either cancer or blood disorder. Unfortunately, many of the chemotherapeutic agents that are used for cancer treatment can prevent puberty from happening or can cause a woman to go through early menopause. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery can all play a part. And since so many Children now survive cancer, this has become, thankfully, an important issue that we need to address. We offer navigation through this somewhat complicated process. The goal of our program is to meet with all of our families and new patients before starting treatment. We discuss how the treatments that we expect to use for their son or daughter may or may not affect fertility in the future. If we think that there is going to be in effect, we can talk about options for preserving fertility before treatment even begins. Once we've had the discussion with the family and we're clear about whether they're interested in proceeding, then we take over and activate the team that will be necessary to make all of this happen. In short order. The fertility preservation team includes the oncology specialists, specialists from urology and reproductive endocrinology. Our options for fertility preservation for our female patients include egg and embryo freezing, as well as ovarian tissue cryopreservation. So if a girl has gone through puberty is menstruating and is producing eggs of her own, then those eggs can be collected and stored in the future. These eggs can be fertilized in order to create a pregnancy. Or sometimes, if there's a partner actually already identified, an embryo can be made and stored as well. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation involves surgery to remove an ovary, which can then be processed, and pieces of ovary frozen for future use. We work very closely with medical oncologists to make sure that whatever fertility preservation option is chosen is going to be safe for the child. We definitely want to address the issue before treatment starts, but there are certainly other times where fertility preservation might come up and should be revisited. For example, anytime during treatment, where something changes, a new medication is introduced or a patient moves on to a different type of treatment. This program is really about the future and really about giving a child the full life that they can have after cancer treatment. Yeah,
