Sex and cancer for men
Some cancer treatments might affect your fertility. Sperm banking is a way of storing your sperm for use in later fertility treatment.
Most people go to a specialist fertility clinic or a clinic that is part of the hospital. There are a number of steps to sperm banking.
In some areas of the UK, sperm banking is available free on the NHS. In other areas you have to pay for it. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommend that sperm storage is available to men who might become infertile because of cancer treatment. But each area can choose whether they store sperm for free or whether you need to pay.
It is important to consider costs of:
collecting samples
storage (usually an annual fee)
The clinic storing your sperm will write to you once a year. They check whether you want to continue storing your sperm. If you do, either you or your local NHS pay the yearly fee. It's important to let the clinic know of any change of details, such as a change of address, so that they can still contact you. If they can’t find out whether you still want to carry on storing the samples they will destroy them.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Society (HFEA) code of practice says that clinics should give you a cost plan before you start fertility treatment or storage of sperm. This should include an idea of the tests you need and how much they'll cost, as well as the treatment plan.
The success rates using thawed sperm vary and depend on the quality of the sperm once it's thawed. Freezing and thawing sperm damages some of them. Sperm banking has produced thousands of babies but it doesn’t guarantee that you'll be able to father a child.
There are no known risks to the man, or to any babies born from using frozen sperm.
The following success rates are from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Society. They include people having treatment using with IVF. The rates are for each embryo put back into the womb:
under 35 the success rate is around 32 births out of 100 treatments (32%)
aged 35 to 39 the success rate is between 19 and 25 births out of 100 treatments (19 to 25%)
aged 40 to 42 the success rate is around 11 births out of 100 treatments (11%)
Last reviewed: 23 Oct 2024
Next review due: 23 Oct 2027
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