Saving women’s fertility during cancer treatment
6/23/202618 min
The first uterine transposition, a minimally invasive surgery that temporarily relocates your uterus into your upper abdomen, was performed in Canada on a young woman in Montreal earlier this year. The surgery was designed to help young women battling specific types of cancer around the pelvic area preserve their fertility, which is typically lost during radiation therapy. We speak with Dr. Reitan Ribeiro, who pioneered this surgery in 2017 and performed the first surgery in Canada this year, and Denise Maradona, an early patient of Dr. Ribeiro's who received one of the first ever uterine transpositions in Brazil back in 2018.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Matt Galloway· Host0:33
Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current podcast. Brittany Fecteau was only 28 years old when she was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, Hodgkin's lymphoma in the groin, and then she got more bad news. Her doctors told her the cancer treatment she needed, radiation to her pelvic area, would cause her to lose her fertility and go into early menopause.
Brittany Fecteau· Soundbite0:56
I'm a mother to a six-year-old boy. It was right where my ovaries and uterus were. The radiation was going to destroy everything, but my savior arrived.
Matt Galloway· Host1:08
That savior was Dr. Reitan Ribeiro, a gynecologic oncologist at the McGill University Health Center in Montreal. Dr. Ribeiro pioneered a procedure to preserve fertility in women undergoing cancer treatment. In February, Brittany became the first Canadian to undergo that procedure. It's called a uterine transposition. Dr. Ribeiro joins us now from Montreal.