Facing Chemotherapy New Hope for Future Fertility Sperm banking can help male patients facing chemotherapy preserve their potential to become parents after treatment. Cryopreservation and storage of sperm is a commonly used method to preserve the reproductive potential of males facing cancer therapy.
Semen collected by the male is processed, frozen and stored.
It can be difficult to predict the extent that a particular treatment will affect an individual. Now patients preparing for cancer treatment can take steps to preserve their reproductive potential by banking sperm before the initiation of treatment. Thirty male patients, between the ages of 16 and 60, have had their semen frozen and stored by the andrology laboratory. Many of these patients have been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, leukemia, testicular cancer or colon cancer. For some of the patients the prognosis is very good.