According to the WHO, approximately 15% of pregnant women will experience obstetric complications.
Researchers from the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh found that the majority of women who survive cancer have a low risk of developing obstetric complications.
This study The Lancet Oncology The project was funded by Childhood Cancer UK, Brain Tumour Charities and the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Currently the most common cancer in the UK, breast cancer affects around 55,000 women each year.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 15 percent of all pregnant women develop potentially life-threatening obstetric complications during pregnancy and childbirth, such as fever and intrapartum hemorrhage and sepsis, and some women require extensive obstetric intervention to survive.
An analysis of data from approximately 100,000 female survivors who were diagnosed with cancer between 1971 and 2006 and were aged between 15 and 39 years old found that approximately 21,437 births were recorded among 13,886 women who survived cancer between 1997 and 2022, a figure 32% lower than the general population.
Furthermore, of the 27 complications examined, the data showed that most pregnant women were unlikely to develop complications during pregnancy or childbirth, and certain cancers, such as bladder, kidney, cervical, and ovarian cancer, were at low risk of multiple complications, while leukemia, cervical, and breast cancer were at increased risk.
The researchers recommend introducing formal guidelines to help cancer survivors receive support, and the results could help obstetricians identify those at high risk of complications during pregnancy by providing enhanced monitoring and interventions to improve pregnancy outcomes.
Lead author Dr Raul Roulen, from the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Applied Public Health, said: “Our findings suggest that cancer survivors who do not have cervical cancer or leukaemia can feel reassured about the risks of pregnancy, as their risk of most obstetric complications is not significantly different from that of the general public.”
