|  | When children or young adults are affected by cancer one of the potential long-term effects of treatment is impaired fertility. Although thankfully rare, cancer may occur during pregnancy and this often requires very difficult decisions regarding treatment.
 | Fertility after cancer treatment |
Although the majority of cases of cancer of all types occur in late adult life a significant number of children and young adults are diagnosed each year as having leukaemia or another form of cancer. For these younger patients the impact of treatment on their fertility is an important issue. Some forms of therapy, unfortunately, virtually always cause infertility, some very very rarely, if ever cause infertility and some forms of treatment have an unpredictable effect.
People who have had chemotherapy and radiotherapy often worry about the impact of their treatment on the health of their future children. Studies of children born to parents who received cancer treatment show no excess of abnormalities or of childhood cancer.
Some women who have been treated for a blood cancer are concerned that becoming pregnant will make their disease more likely to relapse. There is no evidence that this is the case.
Deciding to start or extend a family after recovering from a blood cancer can be very difficult. The best person to advise and guide throughout this process is the consultant haematologist who has all the specific information about the prospective mother or father.
| Cancer during pregnancy |
Although most cancers occur in late life, cancer occurs in as many as 1 in 1000 pregnancies. About half of these cancers are of breast or cervix but leukaemia and lymphoma taken together account for about a quarter of the total.
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