For Pregnant Women Who Find Out They Have Cancer

For Pregnant Women Who Find Out They Have Cancer

For some women, the happiest time in their lives is complicated by the scariest times in their lives as some pregnant women are diagnosed with cancer. As women delay starting or completing their families until older maternal ages, the occurrence of cancer during pregnancy is not uncommon. For example, seven to fifteen percent of breast cancer cases occur in pregnant women making it the most common cancer diagnosed during pregnancy.
The medical literature currently cannot answer all the relevant questions for the woman facing this cancer or other types during pregnancy. Few oncologists or obstetricians treat more than 2 or 3 patients in this situation in an entire career. The only way to gain the necessary knowledge about cancer found and treated during pregnancy is to gather together experience from various hospitals into one single database.
Dr. Elyce Cardonick, a Maternal Fetal Medicine physician at Cooper is doing just that. She collects information about the diagnosis, and treatment of cancer in pregnant women. Such information (kept strictly confidential) will help study the effects of a newly diagnosed cancer and its treatment on a concurrent pregnancy. Additionally, the interaction of a pregnancy on the natural history of certain types of cancer will also be studied. Some women have even received chemotherapy during pregnancy and delivered healthy infants.

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For Pregnant Women Who Are Cancer Survivors

Treatments for childhood or adolescent cancers have improved the survival for many women to and beyond the reproductive years. In addition, newer treatments have been gentler on the preservation of fertility. For these reasons, women considering pregnancy not uncommonly have a prior history of cancer treatment. Patients are concerned about the effects of prior treatment on their offspring and are also concerned about the effects of a pregnancy on their risk of cancer recurrence.
Dr. Cardonick is also interested in including pregnant women with a history of cancer in a separate database. In both studies, the health of the women and their children are followed yearly in cooperation with the patient’s oncologist, pediatrician and obstetrician.
Dr. Cardonick is available for consultation. Even if you have already delivered your baby, or know of someone with cancer who has delivered, it is not too late to contribute your experience to the growing information about cancer and pregnancy in the database.
For more information about the pregnancy and cancer registry or to become a participant, please call (877) 635-4499.