INVESTIGATION OF FERTILIZING-CAPACITY OF CRYOPRESERVED SPERMATOZOA FROM PATIENTS WITH CANCER

Purpose: There are few published reports concerning fertilization and pregnancy outcomes achieved with cryopreserved spermatozoa from cancer patients. Controversy exists regarding the value of sperm banking for these patients before therapy, whether the spermatozoa are viable aft er long-term storage and whether they can fertilize the ovum. We asses s fertilization and pregnancy outcomes achieved with cryopreserved spe rmatozoa from cancer patients using assisted reproductive techniques. Materials and Methods: We studied 10 cancer patients who transferred c ryopreserved semen specimens from our sperm bank to outside in vitro f ertilization programs for assisted reproductive technique, Of these pa tients 5 had Hodgkin's disease, 2 testicular cancer, 1 leukemia and 2 prostate cancer. The length of specimen storage ranged from 14 to 135 months (median 49, interquartile range 24 and 82). Results: The median pre-freeze motility was 44% (interquartile range 36 and 55%) and the median total sperm count was 31.1 x 10(6) (interquartile range 6.3 and 53.9 x 10(6)). At 24 hours after banking the median post-thaw motilit y was 11% (interquartile range 6 and 35%) and the median total sperm c ount was 6.6 x 10(6) (1.2 and 17.1 x 10(6)). A total of 18 cycles of a ssisted reproductive technique were performed among 10 couples with an overall pregnancy rate of 50% per couple, with 2 deliveries, 1 ongoin g pregnancy and 2 miscarriages. The pregnancy rate per cycle of in vit ro fertilization and intracytoplasmic sperm injection was 36.4% with a n implantation rate of 13%. Conclusions: These results indicate that p oor quality cryopreserved spermatozoa from cancer patients, irrespecti ve of the length of storage, may provide successful results with the l atest micromanipulative techniques such as intracytoplasmic sperm inje ction.