Fertility after chemotherapy for male and female germ cell tumours

Abstract

Gonadal function was assessed in fifty-nine men and thirty-one women who had successfully completed chemotherapy with the POMB/ACE regimen for germ cell tumours. Seventeen (81%) of the twenty-one men who had not received para-aortic radiotherapy, whose original tumour bulk was <5 cm and whose duration of chemotherapy was <6 months, recovered spermatogenesis compared with twelve (32%) of thirty-eight patients who had either large tumour masses or longer courses of chemotherapy, or both. All but one of the seventeen women in whom menstruation could have been expected to recur are now menstruating. This study suggests that the great majority of patients treated with POMB/ACE chemotherapy for germ cell tumours will recover fertility.