What are the options for women undergoing radiation treatment?
Radiation can damage tissue that is in the path of the beam of radiation. Sometimes the radiation oncologist can localize the radiation far enough down in the pelvis so that the ovaries won’t be affected. Another option is that before the start of radiation therapy, we can surgically move the ovaries further away from the radiation field. We can simply move them up and out of the pelvic region. Are there any additional fertility-preserving drugs or procedures available to women with cancer? If a woman has already lost her ovarian function, she can get donated eggs and have the embryo or embryos implanted into her own uterus. There’s also another highly experimental surgical procedure, involving the following steps: A piece of ovarian tissue is removed, frozen, and then replaced after the end of cancer therapy. Thus far, no pregnancies have resulted from this still experimental procedure. Perhaps more promising, researchers have been culturing ovarian tissue in the laboratory to get egg
