Globally, approximately 500,000 women under the age of 45 are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. Most of these women are premenopausal.
Many receive systemic therapy with curative intent and survival rates are high. Therefore addressing the long-term effects of anticancer treatments and survivorship considerations are paramount. In this young patient population, there are unique survivorship considerations that require attention, namely fertility and early menopause.
It is well established that loss of ovarian function is a potentially irreversible toxicity from chemotherapy, especially with alkulator regimens that we use commonly in our breast cancer population. It can lead to infertility and immediate and long-term morbidities resulting from early-onset menopause, including vasomotor symptoms, sexual and cognitive dysfunction, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease, which can impact well being and quality of life.
This education session discusses fertility considerations in young patients with breast cancer .
After graduating from the University of Melbourne and completing her medical oncology specialist training in Melbourne, Dr Cui underwent a clinical fellowship at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, where she later worked as a consultant medical oncologist in the Royal Marsden Lung Cancer Unit. She returned to Australia in 2022 and works in the breast cancer clinic, lung cancer clinic, and cancer risk management clinic at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.
Dr Cui's areas of interest are cancer and pregnancy, understanding and preventing the unwanted effects of cancer treatments on ovarian function and fertility, and cancer prevention. Her research focuses on oncofertility and cancer prevention. She is the first author of the ASCO research statement regarding assessing ovarian toxicity in cancer clinical trials. She is a member of the prevention working group of the Lancet Breast Cancer Commission and is the Breast Cancer Trials Australia deputy chair for the Decrescendo trial.
Dr Martin is a medical oncologist and breast cancer clinical trials fellow at Peter Mac, Royal Melbourne Hospital and WEHI. She specialises in seeing breast cancer and melanoma patients and has an interest in cancer prevention, fertility issues and clinical trials.
