Fertility preservation - sperm freezing: patient information

Conditions that can affect your fertility

Cancer

Cancer treatment, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and some kinds of surgery, can affect how well your testes produce sperm. The potential impact on your sperm depends on the type of treatment you will be receiving. It’s important to talk to your cancer team about the likely effects of your treatment.

If you think you would like children at some point and you haven’t started cancer treatment, you may wish to preserve your fertility by having your sperm frozen and stored for later use in fertility treatment.

Gender-related treatment

Hormone treatment and some gender-related surgeries could make you infertile. This depends on the type of treatment you have. Hormone therapy (puberty blockers or oestrogen) suppresses your fertility and, over time, may lead to a complete loss of fertility. In most cases, fertility will recover if you stop hormone treatment; however, in some cases, it does not. Surgery to remove the testes is irreversible and will make you infertile. Removal of the penis means sperm cannot be released.

If you think you would like children at some point, you may wish to preserve your fertility by having your sperm frozen and stored for later use in fertility treatment. Often, this is best done before starting hormone treatment, but if you decide on this later, after starting treatment, that should be possible. Depending on the case, you might need to stop hormone treatment for a few months.

Other conditions

Other medical conditions may require the use of treatments that are damaging to fertility, so you may wish to consider fertility preservation.

Front-line armed forces personnel facing deployment to a combat zone can be offered fertility preservation under the NHS.