Abstract
Here, we report our experience of sperm banking for adolescent male patients in our institute (as a children’s hospital) for the last twenty-four years. There were no nationwide guidelines of sperm banking even for adult male patients before 2003. However, we informed them and their parents about therapy-related infertility and sperm banking since 1990. Moreover, we carried it out under written informed consent since then. To date, there have been fifteen patients who qualified for sperm banking. Eleven patients were sufficiently informed; however, two patients were uninformed because of treatment emergency, and we failed to inform the other two. Four of the eleven patients refused sperm banking. Eventually, seven patients banked their sperm and two of them got married. One fathered a child with assisted reproductive technology and the other got his wife pregnant naturally. One unmarried patient recovered spermatogenesis because he underwent reduced intensity conditioning. At present, only two patients have continued to bank their sperm. We consider that the purpose of sperm banking is not only to preserve fertility but also to encourage patients and to contribute to improving their quality of life. Sperm should be cryopreserved before the initiation of treatment to obtain good-quality sperm. Hemato-oncologists need to keep this in mind and to inform every patient and enlighten other medical staff members about it. In the near future, we have to discuss and cope with the many problems of sperm banking, such as the applicable criteria for it, lack of information about fertility preservation, poor communication with patients, high percentage of unmarried patients, and its high cost.
