Cancer Girl Baby is a World First

A SCOTS woman believed to have become infertile after cancer treatment has had a baby boy after a natural conception in what health chiefs today said was a world first.

Hormonal tests suggested the patient’s ovaries had stopped working after successful chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment for bone cancer which was diagnosed when she was 14.

The unnamed woman, from the east of Scotland required hormone replacement therapy to prevent symptoms of the menopause.

A strip of her ovaries had even been removed and frozen before the treatment started so she could have the tissue replanted later to try to conceive normally.

But she conceived without medical assistance, aged 20, and gave birth to a healthy boy.

Dr Hamish Wallace, a consultant paediatric oncologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh said:

“We were concerned she would not be able to have her own baby because of her treatment.

“It was a great surprise that she managed to have a pregnancy and carry the baby to term and have a healthy baby.

She was delighted.”

Dr Wallace today said the birth of the baby – understood now to be about a year old – was “more than a surprise”.