AN EXPLORATION OF FERTILITY PRESERVATION-RELATED DECISION-MAKING IN CHILDHOOD CANCER PATIENTS

As medical research expands to include a vast variety of new treatments and the world becomes increasingly interconnected, the ethics involving patient care and treatment plan development also become extremely important to consider. One of the most novel and widely unexplored fields of reproductive health is oncofertility, a field of medicine that aims to minimize the negative impacts of cancer treatment on fertility. For many childhood cancer patients, cancer treatment involves oncofertility-related discussions that involve their families, physicians, and many other people. This paper serves primarily to evaluate the quality of educational and clinical resources available to childhood cancer patients regarding fertility preservation, the current approach to these cases from an ethical perspective, and to propose a procedure for treatment plan development and decision making that carefully considers the values and beliefs of the patient, his/her family members, physicians, and ethics board members involved with the case to help standardize the process.