Effects of Cervical Cancer on Fertility

Being diagnosed with cancer is overwhelming news in itself. Moreover, if a woman gets to know that the disease could also prevent her from having children, it could be traumatic.

 

Gynecological cancers like endometrial cancer or cervical cancer can severely affect a woman’s chances of getting pregnant and having children. This happens because of the surgery carried out to remove the cancer as well as other treatments like radiation. Radiation on the pelvis area can damage the uterus and this might make carrying a pregnancy difficult.

 

Some types of chemotherapy can affect your heart as well as lungs, an issue which can make your pregnancy quite complicated.

 

This can be very distressing news for any woman because motherhood is something every woman looks forward to in her life. Most of the women find the fact that their chances of having children might get affected emotionally disturbing, while some women give more importance to having a successful treatment and being alive.

 

Surgical procedures for cervical cancers and their effect on chances of pregnancy

For patients in the early stages of cervical cancer, fertility sparing surgery can be of help. Cervical conization is a surgical procedure carried out to remove just the central part of the patient’s cervix. This is a minimally invasive procedure and patients have had successful pregnancies after this surgery.

 

For patients whose cancer is in stage IA2 or IB1, the surgical procedure is little bigger and involves removal of considerable part of cervix as well as some tissue around the cervix, yet the remainder of the uterus is left intact. The lymph nodes in the pelvis might also be removed to prevent the spread of cancer to other parts of the body. This procedure is called radical trachelectomy.

 

The removal of most of the cervix results in the risk of losing the pregnancy in the early stage or delivering before completing the pregnancy. The patient needs constant monitoring during the pregnancy and might also require a caesarean section for delivering the baby. A cerclage or suture can help keep the pregnancy in the uterus. This procedure is relatively new and not very common. Your oncologist and obstetrician must be consulted and all possible risks discussed in detail.

 

In case of advanced cervical cancer, the patient needs radiation along with surgery. In such a case, ovarian transposition may be tried. It is a minimally invasive surgery. The ovaries are surgically removed from the pelvis and placed in the abdomen in such a manner that they are out of the radiation field. This procedure cannot help if the patient needs chemotherapy. Moreover, this procedure has a chance of failing because the blood supply to ovaries gets affected.

 

If you have to undergo hysterectomy, you would not be able to get pregnant after the treatment is over. Same is the case with radiotherapy which affects the working of your ovaries.

 

Some options available to cancer patients

If you have one ovary, your uterus is not damaged and you are having regular periods, you do have hope of conceiving naturally. If you are having unable to conceive naturally, you can ask your gynecologist about assisted reproductive techniques.

 

If both the ovaries have been removed, or your treatment has eliminated the possibility of healthy eggs, you can opt for donor eggs or embryos and carry the pregnancy as well as give birth. If you are unable to carry the pregnancy because of medical complications, you can have the embryos planted to a surrogate volunteer.

 

If your doctor says that you will be unable to carry a pregnancy because of a procedure like hysterectomy, surrogacy might be a good option for you. You can have eggs or embryos frozen before you begin treatment and then have the same implanted to the surrogate.

 

You must talk to your doctors before your treatment begins and ask them about all your doubts and fears. This might help you find the best possible option for yourself.

 

Author Bio:

Sameer Gupta is a medical writer who writes well-researched, in-depth cancer articles which provide relevant information to help patients combat the deadly disease. Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) prides in providing the best cancer treatment solutions to patients who have endured to various cancer types. With cancer centers in Philadelphia, Tulsa, Chicago, Newnan etc., CTCA aims at providing the best treatment options to cancer patients.

Categories: cancer, cancer patients, cancer treatment, cervical, cervical cancer, Effects, Fertility, minimally invasive, nbsp, pregnancy, surgical procedure, treatment

Five Things You Might Face After Recovering From Cancer

Recovering from cancer is a huge milestone in any person’s life. It means that it’s time to move on and get back to your real life. Right? Not so fast. While yes, recovering from cancer should be celebrated, there are plenty of life-altering changes that cancer may bring. Here are just a few things you might face after recovering from cancer:

 

Saying goodbye to your cancer team

One of the first (and sometimes, hardest) changes is saying goodbye to the people who have cared for you throughout your cancer treatment. A cancer care team becomes almost like a surrogate family, from the nurses who helped you get ready for chemotherapy or other treatments to the reassuring doctors who guided you through your treatments. Fortunately, you can often continue to see doctors from your cancer team for checkups to ensure that you’re healthy and doing well. You can take steps to make the transition easier, like writing a heartfelt letter to your favorite doctors and nurses or even purchasing a small gift, like a fruit basket (note that doctors are often unable to accept expensive personal gifts). Not only will this help you move forward, but your team will love to know how much they are appreciated.

 

Continued pain

One thing that many cancer patients face after their treatments are over and they’ve “graduated” back into real life is continued pain. Chronic pain can be severe or mild and may even continue for the rest of your life. Bone metastasis or peripheral neuropathy can both cause physical pain, as can steroids taken as part of a cancer treatment. You should discuss your pain with your doctors to ensure that it is treated appropriately.

 

Regular doctor visits

Sure, before you got cancer you may have visited the doctor once or twice a year. But after cancer, expect to see your doctors more often until they’ve determined otherwise. It’s not unusual to have monthly checkups at first, oftentimes for a year or more, to ensure that you’re healthy and that the cancer has not returned. Make sure you maintain an open line of communication with your doctor so that you can ask any questions about your health.

 

Battling with bills

Medical bills often haunt cancer survivors, sometimes for years following treatment. Even with insurance, cancer can often cause bills to stack up. Unfortunately, you’ll have to deal with them at some point. If you’re in serious medical debt and you’re not sure what your next steps are, it can be helpful to discuss your debt plan with a professional like Lexington Law, in order to ensure that you’re being treated fairly when it comes to repayment. For more information about debt relief and credit repair you can follow this link.

 

Learning to manage your emotions

Cancer can be emotional, but life after cancer can bring along a whole slew of new emotions, from depression to stress and beyond. If you feel that your emotions are becoming unmanageable, don’t be afraid to discuss your needs with your doctor. Many cancer survivors experience these types of negative emotions after treatment and they can be serious if not addressed early. You may need to see a therapist to talk about what is going on and improve your mental health.

 

Life after cancer can be hard, even while it brings a welcome return to your day to day life. Learning what you may deal with after cancer treatments are complete may help you mentally prepare yourself for changes in your life.

Categories: cancer, cancer survivors, cancer team, cancer treatment, continued pain, health nbsp, life, nbsp, Pain, Real Life, Recovering

Worrying Sexual Side Effects Of Cancer Treatment

Sex might not be something that is really on your mind at all when you’re faced with the prospect of cancer treatment. After all, treatments for this condition are renowned as some of the most invasive and problematic in the world, with a huge range of side effects and issues – it is only natural that you’re going to be worried and think about it an awful lot. Treatments such as chemotherapy have side effects such as causing your hair to fall out and nausea and sickness, so it’s no surprise that sex would not be on your mind if you are going through this.

 

But after this initial shock and troubles with cancer treatment, it doesn’t take long to get more comfortable and start returning to your normal schedule and routine. And this undoubtedly puts sex back as an important issue in your life – for many women the return to sexual intimacy represents normality returning to their life with cancer and it can be a very positive step forward. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that sex with cancer treatment doesn’t have some complications. Some women are more at risk than others and it can cause a huge variety of problems for both your sexual health and the quality of the cancer treatments on offer.

 

There are certain types of cancer that put women at a greater risk of having sexual complications or problematic side effects from their treatments. This includes those being treated for bladder cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, rectal cancer and a number of others. Treatment for any of these cancers can cause physical changes in the body but it is also worth remembering that treatment for cancer can also cause enormous changes in your emotions as well. Clearly these can cause serious problems for your ability to have sex in the way that you are used to.

 

There are a number of commonly experienced sexual side effects and whether you experience will depend on the type of cancer that you have and the stage of treatment that you are at. But some of the most regularly experienced side effects include a difficulty in reaching sexual climax, less energy during sexual activity, a lack of desire for sexual intercourse or other sexual activity, pain during penetration, a reduction in the size of the vagina and vaginal dryness during sex. These problems can clearly cause a number of difficulties and discomforts when you are attempting to get back into sexual activity.

 

With treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy there are a number of additional problems that can make sexual intercourse something that you might not feel like a lot of the time. With chemotherapy in particular you can experience problems such as fatigue and nausea that might make you not feel like you want to have sex – then there are additional problems such as weight loss or weight gain and hair loss, and these can have the effect of making you lose confidence in your appearance and therefore becoming self-conscious about the act of sex.

 

If you are worried about the potential side effects of cancer treatment on sex or you are experience problems in having sex during your cancer treatment then it is well worth going to your doctor and having a talk about the different aspects of the treatments and what you can do to improve your sexual experience while you are taking the treatment. This can be a boon to you both in the fact that you can learn more about it and find different ways you can counteract the problems you’re experiencing.

Categories: additional problems, cancer, cancer treatment, experience problems, problems, Sex, sexual, sexual activity, sexual intercourse, treatment

Can a Cancer Treatment Increase Your Risk of Leukaemia?

There’s no doubt that advancements in cancer treatment have improved the wellbeing of patients with certain cancers, but a study has found there’s still a risk of developing treatment-related leukaemia. Though chemotherapy is often a highly effective treatment for cancer, certain drugs it uses can negatively affect your wellness, and increase your risk of developing therapy-related acute myeloid leukemia (tAML), a rare but frequently fatal condition.

According to Lindsay Morton, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and lead author of the study, ‘In the course of improving interventions and survival rates in many types of cancer, we have learned that certain chemotherapies can cause damage to cells in the bone marrow, increasing a patient’s risk of leukaemia. However, no recent large-scale studies have evaluated how the risk of treatment-related leukaemia has evolved with the changing treatment strategies.’

Hence, Morton and her team from the NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics looked at data from cancer registries in the U.S. Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Programme. The researchers identified adult patients between the ages of 20 and 84 who were diagnosed with any type of cancer between 1975 and 2008, and were treated with chemotherapy. In 426,068 patients, 801cases of tAML were confirmed, which is nearly five times more than the number of cases expected in the general population.

The trends of tAML incidences were discovered to be consistent with changing treatment practices and the toxicities associated with certain chemotherapies. The researchers also noted that the proportion of patients receiving chemotherapy, whether with or without radiotherapy, increased during the study period for many malignancies. Yet the database analysis also found that relative tAML risk for many patients tended to decline with increasing time since the initial cancer diagnosis, especially for those with non-haematologic malignancies.

Dr Morton commented, ‘Future studies should identify patients at the highest risk of tAML so that the risks can be weighed against the benefits of chemotherapy, particularly for cancers with favourable long-term survival.’ She added, ‘Further research is also warranted to assess the risks associated with new targeted and immunomodulatory agents by including secondary malignancies such as tAML as endpoints in prospective clinical studies of new agents or new uses of standard agents.’

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Can a Cancer Treatment Increase Your Risk of Leukaemia?

Categories: cancer treatment, chemotheraphy, leukaemia

New Development: Can Your Cure Your Cancer With A Jab?

Cancer treatment can be a gruelling process and some people are so put off by going through it several times that they may choose to decline procedures if tumours return. It’s important to chat to cancer specialists about our care because they can keep us updated on the latest methods that aim to prolong our life more painlessly.

Cancer immunisations?

It would make cancer treatment much more tolerable if we could just visit our local clinic and get an injection to prevent the disease from taking hold in our bodies, like we can with flu. This may not be too far into the future, according to experts. The Food and Drug Administration in the US recently gave its stamp of approval regarding injections that target advanced prostate cancer tumours. Other vaccines are also being researched that could shrink ovarian, lung and pancreatic lumps. As well as potential vaccines to rid our bodies of the disease, immunisations to prevent the condition have already been launched via human papilloma virus injections. These counteract strains of the condition that create the majority of cervical cancer cases in the UK.

On target

Radiotherapy is another common treatment option we’re offered when we get a cancer diagnosis, but like chemotherapy it has undergone lots of advancement recently. One of the issues linked to the procedure in the past, is that the high intensity rays could affect surrounding healthy tissue. Instead of using these kinds of rays, radiographers can now target tumours with lower frequency electromagnetic waves via cytotron, which can help to preserve surrounding tissue.

Scientists have also developed techniques that allow them to attack cancers very precisely using a robotic arm. The cancer is imaged and its exact location measured so it can be removed via the mechanical device. These cancer treatments show that we are gradually getting closer to that ideal scenario where cancer can be treated and resolved like other common illnesses.

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New Development: Can Your Cure Your Cancer With A Jab?

Categories: cancer treatment, cervical cancer, prostate cancer

New Supercomputer Could Revolutionise Cancer Treatment

Global computer company IBM is in the process of creating a supercomputer which will work to fight and treat cancer in patients, in the first commercial programme of its kind to use ‘big data’ to help fight the disease. This initiative is in partnership with health insurer WellPoint and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York. The computer works by sifting through medical information for over 600,000 pieces of evidence, with two million pages of text for various oncology research books and medical journals. This could help to speed up the diagnoses of patients, thus offering the optimum treatment as soon as possible.

The combination of technology and the decision-making process is set to revolutionise the information available to medical staff, which will help the treatment of various conditions, not just cancer. The first application of the supercomputer will work with 1,500 lung cancer cases, to help clinicians and analysts to interpret the masses of research available. This is a breakthrough technology which will make the most of the big data and aid the challenge ahead of fighting cancer in its many forms.

Cancer is a disease which affects millions of people across the world, of all ages, and can be fatal if not caught early. Studies such as this which create new and innovative technologies could prove to be the future of cancer treatment, to help millions of people tackle this condition. You should be aware of the most prominent symptoms of cancer so that you are aware of any signs that you have the disease, such as lumps in the breast tissue, for example. If you are concerned about any symptoms that you have, or would like some more advice about what to look out for, you should speak to your GP who can advise you further.

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New Supercomputer Could Revolutionise Cancer Treatment

Categories: cancer treatment, diagnoses, new study