Is it safe for a pregnant woman to undergo cancer treatment? It is! A new study of more than 100 children who were exposed to cancer treatment during the last two trimesters of their mother's pregnancy showed they had normal cognitive and cardiac function, researchers said on Monday.
"The main message of this study is that termination of pregnancy is not necessarily warranted, and that early preterm delivery to be able to do cancer treatment isn't warranted, either," said Dr Elyce H Cardonick, a maternal-fetal specialist at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, NJ, who was not involved in the new research.
None of the women underwent chemotherapy in the first trimeser, because the risk of causing serious birth defects is greatest during that period. Instead, the researchers assessed the mental development of 129 children who had been exposed to chemotherapy , radiation or surgery later in pregnancy. The cognitive findings were based on a neurological exam and a test called the Bayley Scales of Infant Development that researchers conducted on the children at 18 months, 3 years or both.
Dr. Frederic Amant said, the team didn't find any difference in cardiac functioning or cognitive function between children exposed to cancer treatment in utero and the control group. Dr. Frederic is the lead author of the study and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. "To some extent, it's surprising because cancer treatment is quite toxic," he said, "and we know most chemotherapy drugs cross the placenta."
More than half of the mothers to-be had breast cancer, and 16 percent had blood cancers. The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was presented on Monday at the European Cancer Congress in Vienna.
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