Summary
Medical advances over recent decades have increased the overall survival rates of children, adolescents and young adults diagnosed with cancer, with survival rates now exceeding 80%. The pressure points are not only at diagnosis - research has shown that cancer treatment can potentially affect fertility later in life.
Survivorship is an important time for addressing the following issues:
- fertility status,
- reproductive monitoring,
- decisions about interval fertility preservation,
- ongoing tissue storage and utilisation.
Options to preserve fertility are possible. Decision Aids (DA) have been developed to provide patients and their families with the required information to make informed reproductive health decisions that align with their values. The prevalence of fertility information needs that are unmet remains high at around 40% amongst cancer survivors. Research evaluating the effectiveness of DAs in survivorship is lacking.
This is a study for parents and Child, Adolescent and Young Adult (CAYA) cancer survivors assessing the Fertility Preservation Decision Aid (FP DA) when provided in with high-quality information.
Eligible participants will be randomly allocated (by chance) to either a control group to receive high-quality information, or a treatment group that will receive the FP DA in addition to high quality information.
Participants will be blinded to their group allocation as they will be instructed to review information regarding fertility preservation without informing them of the type of information they are reviewing.