Delayed childbearing and female ageing impair assisted reproductive technology outcome in survivors of male haematological cancers

A progressive increase in the median female age was observed during the study period (32.2 years until the year 2007 and 36.9 years from the year 2012). Fifty-five out of 93 patients were treated with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) (113 ovarian stimulations, 108 ICSI procedures). Cryopreserved ejaculated sperm was used in 28 couples, fresh sperm in 19, and thawed testicular sperm in 8 couples. Mean female age at ovarian stimulation was 37.0 ± 4.7 years. Twenty-six pregnancies resulted in a full-term birth (23% per started ovarian stimulation; 43.6% per couple) and 33 children were born. No significant differences were observed according to source of sperm (fresh, frozen, testicular) and multivariate analysis confirmed that maternal age was the only variable inversely related to the cumulative delivery rate, being five times lower (15.7%) when the female partner was ≥ 40 years (OR = 0.22, 95% CI 0.06–0.77) vs. 58.3% with younger women (p = 0.0037).