Pregnancy and Hematological Malignancies - Can Improve Outcome - Abstract
The treatment of cancer during pregnancy, has been changed in the last years, actually is acceptable the use the standard chemotherapy regimens, even in first trimester, and late toxicities has not been reported, however, the role of pregnancy in the outcome of hematological malignancies (HM) has not been reported. Thus we review our experience in a large number of cases and longer follow-up in mother HM, to assess if pregnancy influence the outcome on HM. Retrospectively we reviewed the cases of patients with pathological diagnosis of HM and pregnant that received chemotherapy during pregnancy and they were matched with nonpregnant patients, with same age, socio-economical and scholar conditions and HM who received the same chemotherapy, Outcome were measured with progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). From 1975 to 2016, we recruit 202 pregnant patients with pathological diagnosis of HM, in whose no obstetrical complications were observed; delivery and post-partum was normal, late toxicities in mothers were minimal, when a new pregnancy was desired it was normal; chemotherapy administered during pregnancy was well tolerated, PFS and OS were statistically better in pregnant patients when compared with no pregnant women. Children did not
have any congenital malformations, preterm and low-weight was minimal, and did no influence development. All clinical, laboratory, neurocognitive evaluations and echocardiogram were normal, compared with a control group of the same age, economic, social and scholar degree. No acute leukemia or second neoplasm has been observed in mothers or newborns.
Conclusion: We show that pregnant mothers with HM, had a statistically differences in PFS and OS, compared with a matched group of non-pregnant patients. We did not have a scientific explication about it is a probably protective role of pregnancy in this setting of patients.