Pretreatment Semen Parameters in Men With Cancer

Purpose: Whether the presence or specific type of cancer significantly affects semen quality is controversial. We evaluated the semen parameters and associated malignancies of men with cancer who cryopreserved sperm at our institution before undergoing therapy.Materials and Methods: We reviewed the database from our cryopreservation laboratory during a 5-year period. Office charts of 409 of 1,409 patients were available for review. Age at banking, semen volume, sperm density, percent motile sperm and type of cancer were recorded. Semen parameters were compared to values for fertile and subfertile men established by the National Cooperative Reproductive Medicine Network as well as from a large local pre-vasectomy cohort to consider geographic variations.Results: A total of 717 semen samples from 409 men included 45% with testicular cancer, 10% with Hodgkin's lymphoma, 7% with nonHodgkin's lymphoma, 6% with sarcoma, 6% with prostate cancer, 5% with leukemia, 3% with gastrointestinal cancer and 2% with centr...