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Cancer complicates ~1 in every 1000 pregnancies. Of all the cancers that occur in women, less than 1% complicate pregnancies. The four cancers that most commonly complicate pregnancies are cervical cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, and lymphomas (particularly Hodgkin’s lymphoma); however, virtually every form of cancer has been reported in pregnant women (Table 32-1). In addition to cancers developing in other organs of the mother, gestational trophoblastic tumors can arise from the placenta. The problem of cancer in a pregnant woman is complex. One must take into account (1) the possible influence of the pregnancy on the natural history of the cancer, (2) effects on the mother and fetus of complications from the malignancy (e.g., anorexia, nausea, vomiting, malnutrition), (3) potential effects of diagnostic and staging procedures, and (4) potential effects of cancer treatments on both the mother and the developing fetus. Generally, the management that optimizes maternal physiology is also best for the fetus. However, the dilemma occasionally arises that what is best for the mother may be harmful to the fetus, and what is best for the fetus may compromise the ultimate prognosis for the mother. The best way to approach management of a pregnant woman with cancer is to ask, “What would we do for this woman in this clinical situation if she was not pregnant? Now, which, if any, of those plans need to be modified because she is pregnant?”
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Pregnancy is associated with a number of physiologic changes that frequently result in symptoms that may make it difficult to recognize symptoms or physical findings suggestive of a neoplasm. Increased sensitivity of central chemoreceptors to Pco2 drives an increase in minute ventilation that many women perceive as dyspnea at rest or with minimal exertion. The combination of increased total body water, decreased colloid oncotic pressure, and some obstruction of venous return from the lower extremities causes demonstrable dependent edema in more than 50% of pregnant women. Decreased gastrointestinal motility due to high serum progesterone levels and mechanical compression from an enlarging uterus cause early satiety, gastroesophageal reflux, nausea, vomiting, and constipation. Hemorrhoids develop and often bleed. Breasts enlarge and increase in density and “lumpiness.” These changes may result in delayed recognition and more advanced disease at diagnosis.
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Physiologic changes in the maternal immune system necessary to facilitate retention of the fetal semi-allograft raise concerns that the relationship of a cancer with its host may be altered to the detriment of the maternal host. One half of all the genes necessary to create a new individual by sexual reproduction come from each parent. This provides the opportunity for many antigenic differences between the conceptus and the mother. Mammalian placentation has been a very successful method of reproduction, but it has necessitated some combination of both fetal and maternal evolutionary immune adaptations. These mechanisms are incompletely understood and remain an area of active investigation. It does seem likely, however, that this has been accomplished without a general, nonspecific blunting of the maternal immune response, which would be maladaptive to the mother. The multiple mechanisms likely include some “masking” of fetal antigens from recognition by the maternal immune system, blunting the maternal inflammatory response locally at the placental–maternal interface and induction of fetal-specific maternal immune tolerance to avoid rejection. Attention has turned to a subset of CD4+ induced, peripherally produced regulatory T cells that express the X chromosome encoded transcription factor Foxp3 (so-called Tregs). When these Foxp3 cells develop centrally in the thymus, they are termed “Tregs.” When Foxp3-expressing cells develop peripherally, they are called “Pregs.” These regulatory cells suppress the immune response against “self ” and foreign antigens. They seem to be capable of suppressing the maternal response to paternal antigens expressed by the fetus and creating memory cells that retain tolerance to the same paternal antigens in subsequent pregnancies. Unfortunately, in a mouse model, the interleukin (IL) 10 produced by these cells enhanced susceptibility to infection by Listeria and Salmonella, while ironically not proving essential for retaining the fetal graft. Undoubtedly much remains to be learned about this critical immune balance.
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RADIATION IN PREGNANCY
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Exposure of developing fetuses to ionizing radiation may cause adverse fetal effects; awareness among physicians of this potential toxicity has resulted in a disproportionate aversion to diagnostic imaging in pregnancy. First, it must be stated that there are very useful imaging modalities (i.e., ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]) that do not use any ionizing radiation and are not associated with any demonstrable adverse fetal effects. There are three potential adverse fetal effects of ionizing radiation: teratogenesis (induction of anatomic birth defects), mutagenesis, and carcinogenesis. The fetus is most sensitive to teratogenesis during organogenesis in the first trimester. The dose of ionizing radiation necessary to induce birth defects in human fetuses is derived from studies of the survivors of the atomic bomb explosions and by extrapolation from controlled experiments in nonhuman mammals. From these data sources, it is clear that a minimum of 5 rem and more likely greater than 10 rem exposure is needed to induce birth defects in the first trimester. The fetal doses of radiation associated with some common diagnostic radiologic procedures are displayed in Table 32-2. The data in Table 32-2 show that no single procedure or selective combination of diagnostic procedures will exceed the very conservative 5 rem teratogenic threshold. Teratogenic effects later in pregnancy are largely limited to microcephaly and require exposures exceeding 25 rem. The reason for the disproportionate concern about radiation exposure and birth defects is that 2.5% of all fetuses are affected with birth defects without radiation exposure and, therefore, 2.5% of women undergoing any diagnostic imaging procedure will deliver malformed fetuses. Spontaneous mutations occur relatively infrequently, and high doses of radiation (>150 rem) are required to cause a demonstrable increase in that rate. The magnitude of the risk of carcinogenesis in offspring exposed as fetuses to diagnostic doses of radiation has been very difficult to measure due to the relative rarity of cancer in children and the long duration of follow-up that might credibly be needed to see the effect. The inconsistent results and small effect sizes observed from diagnostic exposures make it likely that, if there is an effect, it is very small and, if there is not a significant effect, it will be impossible to prove that fact to everyone’s satisfaction. No imaging using ionizing radiation should be done without a compelling reason and due consideration to obtaining the necessary information by other imaging modalities. Exposure to diagnostic and therapeutic radionuclides, especially radioactive iodine, poses unique risks, but a full discussion of these is beyond the scope of this chapter. Radiation therapy uses radiation doses three orders of magnitude greater than diagnostic procedures, entails substantial risks if the fetus is in the radiation field, and is rarely appropriate in pregnancy. Finally, although difficult to prove, it is likely that more harm has come to pregnant women from failing to perform appropriate diagnostic procedures than has been done to their offspring from performing appropriate diagnostic procedures.
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CHEMOTHERAPY IN PREGNANCY
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There are a number of reasons why it is impossible to make many definitive statements regarding the safety and efficacy of chemotherapy in pregnancy. All of the available data in the literature are published as case reports or case series. The quality and completeness of the data are inconsistent and often poor. Reports may come from medical oncologists, obstetricians, pediatricians, or other treating physicians familiar with the information important to the report from their own perspective but missing information important for other specialty areas. Reports frequently lack critical details of drug administration, such as dose, duration, cumulative dose, and timing of exposure in gestation, and outcomes, including birth weight and gestational age at delivery, indication for or cause of premature delivery, and follow-up of offspring beyond the immediate neonatal period. There are a wide variety of agents available to treat cancer, and they are usually used in combinations. This results in the fact that every patient is almost unique (an experiment of one) in the combination of agents, doses, durations, and gestational ages of administration, making it very difficult to attribute what benefit or toxicity accrues to which agent. Fortunately, cancer in pregnant women is sufficiently rare that it takes quite a while to accumulate enough information for any one agent or combination of agents to be confident about what toxicities (including congenital malformations) are truly associated with which agents. There is such rapid progress in cancer chemotherapy that by the time there may seem to be enough information about the agents currently in use to use them intelligently and counsel patients meaningfully, the cancer community has moved on to newer, more efficacious, and hopefully less toxic agents for which there is little or no experience in pregnancy. Finally, for obvious reasons, there are no untreated controls for comparison. It may be very difficult to sort out the maternal consequences (nausea, vomiting, fever, weight loss, dehydration) that might result directly from the malignancy and cause adverse pregnancy outcomes from some of the toxicities of the chemotherapeutic agents used to treat the malignancy.
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Generally, toxic chemotherapy should be avoided during pregnancy, if at all possible. It should virtually never be given in the first trimester. However, a variety of single agents and combinations have been given in the second and third trimesters, without a high frequency of toxic effects to the pregnancy or the fetus, but data on safety are sparse. Maternal factors that may influence the pharmacology of chemotherapeutic agents include the 50% increase in plasma volume, altered absorption and protein binding, increased glomerular filtration rate, increased hepatic mixed function oxidase activity, and third space created by amniotic fluid. The fetus is protected from some agents by placental expression of drug efflux pumps, but decreased fetal hepatic mixed function oxidase and glucuronidation activity may prolong the half-life of agents that do cross the placenta. A database on the risks associated with individual chemotherapy agents is available on the Internet (http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/ohat/cancer_chemo_preg/chemopregnancy_monofinal_508.pdf).
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Optimal management strategies have not been developed based on prospective clinical trials. Management of a malignancy complicating pregnancy will be critically determined by the gestational age when the malignancy is diagnosed and the anticipated natural history of the lesion, if left untreated. On one extreme, if the malignancy is slowly progressive, the patient is near her delivery date, and waiting until delivery to begin treatment would not be anticipated to compromise maternal prognosis, then treatment could be delayed until after delivery to avoid fetal exposure to chemotherapy. If there is a greater sense of urgency to begin definitive treatment to avoid compromising maternal prognosis, and the patient is beyond 24 weeks of gestation but remote from her delivery date, then treatment (surgical, medical, or both) might be initiated during pregnancy and plans made to deliver the fetus early to avoid exposure to more chemotherapy than absolutely necessary. Finally, if the patient is in her first trimester and toxic chemotherapy must be initiated promptly to avoid a very poor maternal outcome, then it may be necessary to consider therapeutic abortion to avoid maternal disaster and fetal survival with injury resulting in long-term morbid sequelae. No two cases are precisely alike, and inevitably, decision making must be individualized, preferably with consultation with a multidisciplinary team including medical oncology, surgical oncology if appropriate, maternal–fetal medicine, neonatology, and anesthesia. Pregnancy appears to have little or no impact on the natural history of malignancies, despite the hormonal influences. Spread of the mother’s cancer to the fetus (so-called vertical transmission) is exceedingly rare.