Many boys and young men store sperm before starting their cancer treatment, even if the treatment is not likely to affect fertility. Macmillan Cancer Support can give you information about the process of sperm banking.
Although, doctors try to offer all young men the chance to store sperm before their treatment starts, this may not be possible for various reasons. It is best to bank sperm before starting chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment.
If you want to know more about sperm banking, it is best to discuss it with your cancer doctor or specialist nurse.
sperm storage
As far as it is known, sperm can stay frozen and usable for many years. The longest that anyone has stored sperm so far and then used it successfully to become a dad is 21 years!
It is important for you to know that the process of freezing the sperm is sometimes not very efficient and many sperm die. If you have stored some sperm, the scientist who froze your sample should be able to tell you or your doctor how well it has frozen. They should also be able to tell you how many samples have been stored. It is usually possible to divide the sperm up, so that each sample you bank can be used in a number of future treatments.
The samples are kept in special freezing boxes (tanks) known as a sperm bank.
Keeping sperm samples safe
The sperm bank will take great care to keep your samples safe:
- Your samples will be carefully labelled, so they cannot be mixed up with anyone else’s.
- The tanks holding the frozen samples are fitted with alarms to let the scientists immediately know if there’s a problem (which is rare) .
- The sperm bank will have spare tanks they can move your samples into if there is a problem that can’t be fixed.
- Your samples will be stored in different tanks. This means that if there’s a problem with one of the tanks not all of your samples will be affected.
In spite of all this care, it is important to be aware that accidents may still happen due to unforeseen circumstances. However, these are very rare.
