Guidelines Developed Decades Ago Offers Fertility Hope to Child Cancer Patients

Guidelines developed nearly 20 years ago help identify girls with cancer who can become infertile after treatments.

The criteria developed by researchers at the University of Edinburgh helps to successfully select girls who should consider freezing some of the tissues from the ovaries for use in future. Health experts strongly believe that these frozen tissues from the ovaries help young cancer survivors have offsprings of their own.

In a few cases, the treatment used to battle cancer affects female fertility drastically by the onset of early menopause. The only effective strategy to preserve fertility in these female patients is by freezing samples of ovary tissues before the beginning of the treatment.

It is estimated that nearly 30 infants have been born from frozen ovarian tissues taken from adult women but the same procedure is not proven for girls and young women.

Using surgical technique, the initial samples of ovaries can be collected and frozen and this remains experimental. Hence, it is important that the doctors precisely predict which patient is more vulnerable to benefit from this procedure and when the procedure can be carried out safely.

These guidelines were developed 20 years ago to pick girls that can be offered these procedures based on their age, the type of cancer they are battling with and their chances of being cured from it. Since these patients are now older, the doctors are better able to validate their predictions.

The criteria was validated by evaluating 400 girls with cancer who were under 18 years of age on being diagnosed. They noticed that the criteria helped to accurately predict all but one of the patients who experienced early onset of menopause.

The lead researcher - Professor Hamish Wallace of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Child Life and Health and Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children (RHSC) - said: "Advances in lifesaving treatments mean that more and more young people with cancer are surviving the disease. Here we have an opportunity to help young women to have families of their own when they grow up, if they so choose."

The finding was documented in journal Lancet.