There was a very nice session in the patient advocacy track on oncofertility in general, so what these terms mean and what we have to do to implement oncofertility care in our practice. Oncofertility is a term that was founded more than 20 years ago now, and it’s a term that wants to bridge two different specialties, oncology on one side and reproductive medicine on the other side, to increase chances of a future pregnancy for our patients...
There was a very nice session in the patient advocacy track on oncofertility in general, so what these terms mean and what we have to do to implement oncofertility care in our practice. Oncofertility is a term that was founded more than 20 years ago now, and it’s a term that wants to bridge two different specialties, oncology on one side and reproductive medicine on the other side, to increase chances of a future pregnancy for our patients. So we have addressed oncofertility, I would say, on a 360-degree in a more multidisciplinary fashion, meaning that oncofertility these days is not only discussing the risk of infertility, but is not only offering fertility preservation strategies to our patients, so options that may help patients to increase chances of a future pregnancy, but this is a more complex topic in which other important areas are important, because the side effects of the treatment, particularly chemotherapy, in young women, will lead to the so-called premature ovarian insufficiency or early menopause. This is not just infertility, but these side effects will translate into sexual dysfunction, other menopause-related symptoms, and so oncofertility is, I would say, a more general term to address all the gynecological-related issues that our patients, young patients, young women with cancer, may have. Among these other issues, as I mentioned, sexual dysfunction is one of them, hot flashes, other menopause-related symptoms, but also contraception are critical issues that need to be addressed with our young patients. And as an oncologist, even as an oncologist that has very much interest and expertise also in this subject, I strongly advocate for creating this connection with fertility specialists to refer patients to them for discussing these other gynecological-related issues, so that we can save some time in our consultation for more oncology-related issues, but also because these other specialists are more expert than us in addressing these gynecological issues. So creating this unit, referring patients to experienced gynecologists to deal with patients with cancer, will help on one side, us to maybe focus on other aspects during our very, very short consultations, and then to improve overall the care of young patients with cancer, because we are referring them to people that have a larger expertise on this subject.
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