Doctors in the United Kingdom have created a table to predict when a woman who has undergone radiation therapy as a part of cancer treatment regimen in her abdominal or pelvic area may become sterile, according to a new study published in the July 2005 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology-Biology-Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
Radiation therapy to the abdominal and pelvic regions in children and adolescents may potentially expose the ovaries to radiation and cause premature ovarian failure. Though their window of opportunity to become pregnant may be smaller, receiving radiation therapy does not preclude them from natural conception and a successful pregnancy. The researchers developed a formula that takes into account the age of the patient at the time of treatment, the number of premature eggs present at the time of treatment and the dose of radiation received to determine a window of fertility and at what age the woman may experience ovarian failure.
With the help of modern three-dimensional radiation therapy planning, clinicians are able to determine how much radiation the ovaries are exposed to and using the method they developed, the doctors would be able to determine a window of roughly 7.6 years for when a woman could expect to become infertile. The exact window of opportunity will vary from patient to patient.