for eMaxHealthCancer Treatment and Fertility
Talking about sex and fertility can be just as embarrassing for medical staff as for adolescent cancer patients, the 4th International Conference on Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Medicine heard today.
However, Drs Allan Pacey and Adam Glaser warned the conference, organised by Teenage Cancer Trust, that if doctors failed to discuss the effect that the cancer or its treatment could have on their future fertility with their young patients, the patients would have to make vital choices about treatment without all the facts they really needed in order to reach a decision and give truly informed consent.
Dr Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the Academic Unit of Reproductive and Developmental Medicine, University of Sheffield, UK, said: "Young people face a double whammy when given a diagnosis of cancer: not only do they have to deal with the news that they have a potentially life-threatening illness, but also that it could affect their fertility in future years. Suddenly, they have to discuss and consider intimate matters, which are often highly embarrassing to them, at a time when they are at their most vulnerable
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