Prostate cancer therapies and fertility: What do we really know?

We reviewed the literature for articles in English in the Medline database from 1970 until today. The keywords used were “prostate cancer,” “fertility,” “radical prostatectomy,” “external beam radiotherapy,” “androgen deprivation therapy,” and “chemotherapy.” Only the studies with full paper were included in our review. The knowledge for this important issue is minimal and more minimal tends to be the consent of the patients. Prostate cancer does not seem to directly influence fertility, but all its therapies directly or indirectly seem to do so. In many of them, the impact may be reversible, but the mechanisms of this impact are still under consideration. Prostate cancer treatments, predominantly radiation, can cause long-term azoospermia; however, the data in the literature are sparse, mainly derived from small series, and based on these, no safe conclusions can be drawn.