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General Updates | The management of hematologic malignancies during pregnancy: incidence and common misconceptions
Daan Dierickx, MD, PhD, KU Leuven and University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, discusses the increasing importance of managing hematologic malignancies during pregnancy, citing the role of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in detecting maternal cancer and the higher incidence of certain malignancies in young patients. Prof. Dierickx highlights the key misconception among clinicians when it comes to managing this patient population, noting that chemotherapy and other therapies can be safely administered during pregnancy with careful consideration of both the mother and the fetus. This interview took place virtually.
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Transcript
Thank you very much for this question. It’s a good question. I think there are many reasons. So the first reason is that we diagnose more patients during pregnancy due to the occurrence of the NIPT test, the non-invasive prenatal test, in which chromosomal abnormalities for the fetus are discovered. And sometimes we see an aberrant DNA profile, which, after some investigations, belongs to the cancer of the mother...
Thank you very much for this question. It’s a good question. I think there are many reasons. So the first reason is that we diagnose more patients during pregnancy due to the occurrence of the NIPT test, the non-invasive prenatal test, in which chromosomal abnormalities for the fetus are discovered. And sometimes we see an aberrant DNA profile, which, after some investigations, belongs to the cancer of the mother. A second cause is the fact that actually some hematological malignancies, like, for instance, Hodgkin lymphoma and ALL, are seen more commonly in young patients, so it’s not surprising that we see them in pregnant patients. So it doesn’t mean that we see more malignancies in pregnant patients compared to the non-pregnant populations, but it’s just because of the age of the patients that we can see them.
I think the most common misconception is the fact that some physicians still think that we are not able to give chemotherapy or other therapies during pregnancy. We now know that some chemotherapies, not all, but some chemotherapy can be given during the pregnancy. Of course, we need careful consideration of both the mother and the baby, but it’s possible to deliver the chemotherapy in pregnant patients.
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