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. 2023 Feb;6(2):e1753.
doi: 10.1002/cnr2.1753. Epub 2022 Nov 8.

A multidisciplinary pediatric oncofertility team improves fertility preservation and counseling across 7 years

John A Ligon  1   2 , Masanori Hayashi  3 , Devon Ciampa  1 , Cara Kramer  1 , Alfredo Guastella  1 , Robert J Fuchs  1 , Amin S Herati  4 , Mindy S Christianson  5 , Allen R Chen  1
Affiliations

A multidisciplinary pediatric oncofertility team improves fertility preservation and counseling across 7 years

John A Ligon et al. Cancer Rep (Hoboken). 2023 Feb.

Abstract

Background: Oncofertility is a developing field of increasing importance, particularly in pediatric oncology, where most patients are likely to survive long-term and have not yet had the opportunity to have children.

Aims: We performed a quality improvement initiative to increase our rates of fertility preservation counseling and referral through the implementation of a pediatric oncofertility team, and we report outcomes 7 years following implementation of our initiative.

Methods and results: We compare our baseline oncofertility survey to 44 post-intervention survey respondents and electronic medical record documentation for 149 patients treated in 2019. Ninety-five percent of post-intervention survey respondents recalled fertility counseling (baseline 70%, p = .004) and 89.3% were appropriately referred for fertility preservation (baseline 50%, p = .017). Counseling was documented in 60.4% of charts; 81% of patients analyzed by chart review were appropriately referred for fertility preservation. Fertility preservation outcomes differed by sex assigned at birth.

Conclusion: Creation of an oncofertility team produced improvements in fertility counseling and fertility preservation referral across an extended period of time.

Keywords: fertility counseling; fertility preservation; oncofertility; pediatric oncology; quality improvement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have stated explicitly that there are no conflicts of interest in connection with this article.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Counseling for the risk of infertility and referral/discussion of fertility preservation procedures prior to and following the implementation of the oncofertility team. *In the baseline survey, the algorithm determining which patients to discuss fertility preservation procedures with had not been instituted. Thus, all 14 patients who received counseling regarding the risks of infertility were considered candidates. Following the implementation of the algorithm, only patients who fit the criteria as outlined in Supplemental Figure S1 were considered candidates. **p‐value between baseline survey and chart review cohort is .407 for counseling and .059 for referral
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