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. 2021 Jan 1;13(1):116.
doi: 10.3390/cancers13010116.

Fifteen Year Regional Center Experience in Sperm Banking for Cancer Patients: Use and Reproductive Outcomes in Survivors

Sara Stigliani  1 , Claudia Massarotti  2 , Caterina De Leo  2 , Elena Maccarini  1 , Fausta Sozzi  1 , Angelo Cagnacci  2 , Paola Anserini  1 , Paola Scaruffi  1
Affiliations

Fifteen Year Regional Center Experience in Sperm Banking for Cancer Patients: Use and Reproductive Outcomes in Survivors

Sara Stigliani et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Cancer treatments frequently impair the reproductive ability of patients by damaging spermatogenesis. International guidelines recommend semen cryopreservation to preserve the fertility of oncological adult males and pubertal boys. However, due to the low usage rate of banked samples, not a lot of data on assisted reproductive treatments (ART) success rates in this population and follow-up data for children born are available in the literature. The aims of this study were to report our 15 years of experience, the clinical outcomes of ART as well as neonatal characteristics of babies born. We retrospectively reviewed 682 oncological patients who were referred to our center from 2004 to 2019 for fertility preservation. Over the years, only 26 patients (4%) returned to use their sperm by ART. They were survivors of leukemia and lymphomas (52%), testicular cancer (20%), and other malignant diseases (28%). These couples performed 45 cycles: 34 intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) plus 11 frozen embryo transfers. A total of 13 children were born, with 35% of the cumulative live-birth delivery rate per couple. No stillbirths or malformations were recorded. These successful findings demonstrated that pregnancy could be safely achieved using frozen-thawed sperm of cancer survivors who cryopreserved before gonadotoxic therapies.

Keywords: ICSI; assisted reproduction treatment (ART); cancer; fertility preservation; pregnancy after cancer; pregnancy outcome; sperm cryopreservation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Cancer types from patients counseled for fertility preservation at our center. The percentage of each category is represented. n.a.: data not available. (b) The number of patients being referred for a successful cryostorage progressively over the years.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The cumulative rate of first use of frozen semen for the whole cohort (a) and according to the age at storage (b). The graph was plotted using Kaplan-Meier estimates.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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