Infertility

Melissa Gilbert, of Scotia, N.Y., was told two years ago she had early-stage cervical cancer, and that her treatment would prevent her from having another child.

"It was devastating," Gilbert recalled, "… and to then find out that the treatment for it is going to cost me my fertility and will prevent me from having any more children was just as devastating for me." But Gilbert and her husband searched for an alternative and found Dr.

Nadeem Abu-Rustum at in New York, one of a handful of doctors performing a new surgery for cervical cancer called a trachelectomy.

The approach leaves most of the womb intact, preserving a woman's ability to become pregnant and bear a child.

Abu-Rustum showed Senay a depiction of a cervical cancer tumor.

"Instead of removing the cervix and uterus completely with the upper part of the womb," he said, "we only remove … the cervix, surrounding tissue, and the top part of the womb.

… We can reconnect the lower part of the uterus to the top part of the womb." He says women who have the surgery have a "very realistic, actually a very good chance" of future pregnancy and delivery.

Abu-Rustum cautions that the operation is "done for a very select group of patients who have early-stage cervical cancer (that hasn't spread), usually stage-one patients, so the cure rate appears to be very similar, almost identical to a radical hysterectomy, and approximately 90 percent of patients are cured with this...

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