Can A Man With Prostate Cancer Get A Woman Pregnant?
Both prostate cancer and its treatment procedure affect a man’s life to such an extent that it becomes almost impossible for him to be a father of a baby or make a woman pregnant. However, most of us are still unaware about the relationship between prostate and sex life. For this, the article intends to highlight a few aspects of prostate cancer and its relations with erectile dysfunction, ejaculation and production of sperms.
Erectile Dysfunction -A Major Side Effect
Erectile dysfunction is a major side effect associated with prostate cancer treatment. ED indicates difficulty in retaining an erection. However, in case a man succeeds to regain his ability to achieve erection, he may even requires 2 years’ time to obtain full recovery post-surgery. On the other side, a few men do not experience firm erections as before. Along with this, if doctors have to remove the nerves connected with the tissue responsible to control erection, men will experience permanent loss in the erections. However, if you are lucky enough, you may cure ED problems by undergoing proper treatment, including the nerve-sparing surgery intended to avoid permanent or long-lasting injury to nerves responsible for controlling your erection.
Prostatectomy Leads To Semen Loss And Prevents Ejaculation
Even though, radiation oncologists and surgeons put their best possible efforts, it becomes almost impossible for a man to become a father via sexual intercourse even after initial treatment. This is because; whenever a male undergoes with prostatectomy, doctors remove his prostate and surrounding seminal vesicles i.e. two small structures reside at the bladder’s base. Combined with prostate, seminal vesicles provide the required semen for carrying sperms downward to urethra and out from the penis at the time of ejaculation.
Semen loss followed by surgical procedure prevents ejaculation, because of which sperms fail to move out from the body to reach to the fallopian tube and egg of the women to cause fertilization. On the other side, if we talk about radiation therapy, we should say that prostate cancer treatment causes impairment of fertility. Reason for this is that seminal vesicles and radiated prostate cells often produce semen, which fails to transport sperms in a well manner.
Fertility Options Post Treatment Of Prostate Cancer
As a man if you still want to be a father after your prostate cancer treatment, you may opt for any of the two fertility options-
Sperm Banking
In case of sperm banking, doctors follow a medical procedure to freeze the semen that incorporates sperm in the form of liquid nitrogen. Although in this situation, cells stay alive technically, they cease every type of cellular activities. After freezing, approximately 50percent of the sperm regenerates its ability and thereby, helps in artificial insemination.
Extraction Of Sperms Directly
Extraction of sperm directly from men’s testicles may be an alternative option to sperm banking method. Accordingly, doctors inject a particular microscopic sperm within a single microscopic egg after they harvest sperm from men’s testicular tissues. When the procedure leads to the formation of embryo, doctors implant it within the uterine wall of the women and allow it for further growth.
However, success rate of both of these aforementioned methods is only 50 percent.
Conclusion
To conclude, we should say that it is very difficult for a man or impossible in most of the cases to make his partner pregnant or to father a child after prostate cancer treatment.
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