Healthcare

Zeev Blumenfeld

Technion– Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

Biography

Abstract

The odds of preserving gonadal function after gonadotoxic chemotherapy are significantly better for prepubertal girls than for boys. Although ovarian function has been preserved in most long-term female survivors treated prepubertally for lymphoma,but only in approximately half of the similarly treated adult reproductive-age women, it is clinically logical to generate a tem- porary and reversible prepubertal milieu before and during the gonadotoxic chemotherapy. Many groups of clinicians have been using gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) cotreat- ment for minimizing the gonadotoxic effects of chemotherapy, by simulating a prepubertal hormonal milieu, with the rationale that preventing premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) is preferable to treating it. However, reported results addressing this strategy have been conflicting, and several major international guidelines still consider it experimental.