Breast Cancer and Fertility : Part One

In the city of Seattle, a group of determined, young women find support and renewed strength by sharing their common experience of coping with breast cancer and the daily challenges that come hand in hand with the disease. Fox News presents special coverage of the inspiring members of the Northwest Women’s Survival Group and the Young Survival Coalition.

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As cancer patients, these women often must contend with the loss of much more than their health alone. Many cancer treatments can cause infertility in both women and men. Chemotherapy and radiation can often damage a woman’s eggs beyond use, and the hormone therapies used to treat breast cancer specifically can also affect a woman’s ability to conceive or carry an embryo to full term. For certain cancers in women, a hysterectomy or oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) may be part of the treatment.

Fortunately, several options exist for preserving fertility in female cancer victims. In vitro fertilization, or embryo freezing, is the most common method today. Fertilized embryos can be frozen and preserved for future use after the patient has reached the remission stage of her cancer treatment. If the mother is unable to carry a child due do to her cancer or cancer treatments, surrogacy is an option.

Other more experimental techniques used to preserve fertility are egg freezing -- where unfertilized eggs are collected and frozen for future use --, and ovarian tissue freezing -- where part of a woman’s ovary is removed and divided into thin strips to be frozen. After a her cancer treatment, this tissue can be transplanted back into her body usually near the fallopian tubes, the abdomen, or even in her forearm. The eggs produced by the transplanted tissue can then be removed and fertilized in a lab.