Lymphomas, leukemias or tumors of germ cells (eggs or sperm). Young people who suffer from one of these three cancers must undergo heavy treatments with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Treatments that may interfere with their ability to produce sperm or eggs. Problem, this risk of infertility is not sufficiently taken into account in France, according to researchers from the Toulouse University Hospital who signed a study in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
More precisely, Myriam Daudin and Louis Bujan deplore the lack of information for young patients “in the difficult period of the announcement of cancer”. Informing young patients in a precise way on how to store their gametes (eggs or sperm) is “psychologically important because of the positive perspective that this offers”, explain the authors of the study, taken up by AFP.
Today, French law requires patients who are going to start treatments that are dangerous for their fertility to be informed about the possibilities of collecting and storing their eggs and spermatozoa through freezing. This duty of information is underpinned by the need to preserve the chances of procreation. But in fact, there is a real lack of information, say Toulouse residents, to which we must add deficiencies in the training of nursing staff to promote and inform about this possibility of conservation of sex cells.
The priority is therefore to “harmonize”, to “organize better at the national level” and also to “promote” this practice, the scientists conclude.
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