Sperm Cryopreservation for Newly Diagnosed Cancer Patients in South of China: A 12-Year Retrospective Study in 1034 Patients

Background: Sperm cryopreservation is an effective method to fertility preservation for cancer patients before anti-cancer treatments. However, there were very few data on fertility preservation for the large number of cancer patients in South China. Objectives: To understand the fertility preservation status of newly diagnosed male cancer patients in South China. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was evaluated in 1034 cancer patients performed sperm cryopreservation in the human sperm bank of Guangdong Province in China between the years 2010 and 2021. The data were collected from medical records and analysed including demographics, cancer information, semen examination, and cryopreservation. Results: Of these 1034 cases, 302 had reproductive system tumors, mainly testicular cancers (99.0%), and 732 found non-reproductive system tumors, including lymphoma (33.1%), gastrointestinal cancer (16.3%), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (15.7%), leukemia (7.7%), sarcoma (3.6%) and others (23.6%). The number of cancer patients with sperm cryopreservation had been increasing since the last 12 years. The patients with reproductive system tumors had significantly lower sperm concentration, pre-freezing progressive motility, and post-thawing progressive motility than those with non-reproductive system tumors (p<0.001). Significant differences were observed on sperm parameters mentioned above and normal sperm morphology between the patients undergone anticancer surgery before sperm cryopreservation and those without surgery (p<0.05). Conclusions: This study provides valuable data derived from the geographical area for the understanding of its fertility preservation status, which demonstrates that reproductive system tumors greatly harmed the sperm quality of the patients prior to anti-cancer treatments and reflects more cancer patients would have strong willingness to undergo fertility preservation in South China.