Fertility and Cancer
Contents
- About fertility and cancer
- What are reproduction and fertility?
- Fertility after a cancer diagnosis
- Making decisions
- Treatment side effects and fertility
- Female options before cancer treatment
- Female options after cancer treatment
- Male options before cancer treatment
- Male options after cancer treatment
- Preserving fertility in children and adolescents
- Other ways to be a parent
- Not having a child
- Emotional impact
- Relationships and sexuality
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Fertility and Cancer
About fertility and cancer
Cancer and its treatment may affect a person’s ability to conceive a child or maintain a pregnancy (fertility). The information in this section helps you understand how cancer treatment can affect fertility.
Whether or not you want to become a parent or add to your family, you may be wondering how cancer will affect your fertility. We hope this information will help you understand how you may be able to try to keep (preserve) your fertility before and during cancer treatment, and your options after cancer treatment. We cannot give advice about the best ways to preserve fertility. You need to discuss this with your doctors.
When talking about the body, we use the terms “female” and “male”. Some people may identify with a different sex or gender.
This information is reviewed by
This information was last reviewed October 2022 by the following expert content reviewers: Prof Martha Hickey, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The University of Melbourne and Director, Gynaecology Research Centre, The Royal Women’s Hospital, VIC; Dr Sally Baron-Hay, Medical Oncologist, Royal North Shore Hospital and Northern Cancer Institute, NSW; Anita Cox, Cancer Nurse Specialist and Youth Cancer Clinical Nurse Consultant, Gold Coast University Hospital, QLD; Kate Cox, McGrath Breast Health Nurse Consultant, Gawler/ Barossa Region, SA; Jade Harkin, Consumer; A/Prof Yasmin Jayasinghe, Director Oncofertility Program, The Royal Children’s Hospital, Chair, Australian New Zealand Consortium in Paediatric and Adolescent Oncofertility, Senior Research Fellow, The Royal Women’s Hospital and The University Of Melbourne, VIC; Melissa Jones, Nurse Consultant, Youth Cancer Service SA/NT, Royal Adelaide Hospital, SA; Dr Shanna Logan, Clinical Psychologist, The Hummingbird Centre, Newcastle West, NSW; Stephen Page, Family Law Accredited Specialist and Director, Page Provan, QLD; Dr Michelle Peate, Program Leader, Psychosocial Health and Wellbeing Research (emPoWeR) Unit, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, The Royal Women’s Hospital and The University of Melbourne, VIC; Pampa Ray, Consumer; Prof Jane Ussher, Chair, Women’s Health Psychology, and Chief Investigator, Out with Cancer study, Western Sydney University, NSW; Prof Beverley Vollenhoven AM, Carl Wood Chair, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Monash University and Director, Gynaecology and Research, Women’s and Newborn, Monash Health and Monash IVF, VIC; Lesley Woods, 13 11 20 Consultant, Cancer Council WA.