What are the common cancers for young men?

There are a number of different cancers that can affect men of reproductive age, and certainly testicular cancer is one of the most common. Even in our own department, we are seeing patients who are coming in with the diagnosis of testicular cancer, which does typically affect young men, who are not adequately being assessed for fertility preservation. Fortunately, I’ve got a captive audience in my own department, and in short time we were able to really increase the awareness of addressing fertility preservation issues with patients prior to cancer therapy.

So for instance, with a man with testicular cancer, typically the standard of care is to remove the testicle, leaving that patient with only one remaining testicle. But in some instances the remaining testicle may not be functioning adequately to allow normal fertility potential in such a patient, so on these patients who have testicular cancer, prior to them receiving therapy, we’ll try to preserve their fertility through sperm cryopreservation.