Network

Due to the increasing chances of curing cancer, the importance of quality of life after surviving cytotoxic and/or radiotherapy is increasingly coming into focus. In this context, fears about the preservation of fertility in young men and women are in the focus.

Due to advances in reproductive medicine, a variety of fertility-protective methods are now available. However, these techniques were initially only offered worldwide in individual centres with great expertise, so that many patients were deprived of them.

As a result, the FertiPROTEKT network was founded in May 2006. It now comprises over 150 university and non-university centres and has been extended to Austria and parts of Switzerland.

Since our knowledge about the damage to the ovaries and testicles caused by the various chemotherapies is still very limited and the new fertility-protective therapies still need to be further optimised, especially in women, intensive clinical and scientific investigations are necessary. These can only be optimally dealt with in a network such as FertiPROTEKT, so we have set ourselves many other important goals in addition to patient care, which is the focus of our efforts.

Our main objectives are:

• Every patient of reproductive age should be able to receive fertility counselling before and after gonadotoxic therapy.
• All effective fertility-protective therapies should be offered nationwide.
• Therapies are further developed, optimised and sensibly applied in close cooperation with oncologists from all disciplines.
• The implementation of the therapies is reviewed and optimised with regard to their effectiveness and costs.
• The toxicity of the currently used chemotherapies will be evaluated with the help of blood tests before and after chemotherapy in order to use less gonadotoxic chemotherapy regimens in the future, if necessary.
• The psychological relief provided by counselling and the implementation of fertility-protective therapies is evaluated.

Since some of the fertility-protective therapies have not yet been standardised, but their effectiveness depends crucially on an optimal technique, all of the FertiPROTEKT centres mentioned have committed themselves to following the strict standards and quality controls and to participating in the scientific evaluation.