Postmedia - Tissue freezing offers some cancer patients hope of one day having children

Still highly experimental, ovarian tissue retrieval takes less than 30 minutes, but the "rescued" portion of the reproductive organ may represent the only hope for some cancer patients — girls and young women who face sterilizing chemotherapy and radiation treatments — to one day have a biological child, says Dr. Togas Tulandi, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and Milton Leong chair in reproductive medicine at McGill University. […]

The idea of impaired fertility is difficult for parents and children to grasp when a child has just been diagnosed with cancer — when the number 1 thought racing through everyone's head is, "Is my child going to die?"

"But even if the parents and kids are not interested in talking about it now, we know that they may regret it later," says Dr. Janet Takefman, director of psychological services at the McGill University Health Centre Reproductive Centre in Montreal.

"We are slowly getting the word out: 'We do this. It should be offered to every patient.' " The McGill clinic offers egg freezing to post-pubescent girls and young women, as well as ovarian tissue banking to children as young as 10.