Introduction: Tremendous Progress on Cancer Extends to Cancer in Pregnancy
The biomedical research enterprise that took shape in the United States after World War II has had numerous positive effects, including significant progress made during the past 75-plus years in the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1944 request of Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the then Office of Scientific Research and Development, to organize a program that would advance and apply scientific knowledge for times of peace — just as it been advanced and applied in times of war — culminated in a historic report, Science – The Endless Frontier. Presented in 1945 to President Harry S. Truman, this report helped fuel decades of broad, bold, and coordinated government-sponsored biomedical research aimed at addressing disease and improving the health of the American people (National Science Foundation, 1945).
Discoveries made from research in basic and translational sciences deepened our knowledge of the cellular and molecular underpinnings of cancer, leading to advances in chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and other treatment approaches as well as continual refinements in their application. Similarly, our diagnostic armamentarium has significantly improved.
Dr. E. Albert Reece
As a result, we have reduced both the incidence and mortality of cancer. Today, some cancers can be prevented. Others can be reversed or put in remission. Granted, progress has been variable, with some cancers such as ovarian cancer still having relatively low survival rates. Much more needs to be done. Overall, however, the positive effects of the U.S. biomedical research enterprise on cancer are evident. According to the National Cancer Institute’s most recent report on the status of cancer, death rates from cancer fell 1.9% per year on average in females from 2015 to 2019 (Cancer. 2022 Oct 22. doi: 10.1002/cncr.34479).
It is not only patients whose cancer occurs outside of pregnancy who have benefited. When treatment is appropriately selected and timing considerations are made, patients whose cancer is diagnosed during pregnancy — and their children — can have good outcomes.
To explain how the management of cancer in pregnancy has improved, we have invited Gautam G. Rao, MD, gynecologic oncologist and associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, to write this installment of the Master Class in Obstetrics. As Dr. Rao explains, radiation is not as dangerous to the fetus as once thought, and the safety of many chemotherapeutic regimens in pregnancy has been documented. Obstetricians can and should counsel patients, he explains, about the likelihood of good maternal and fetal outcomes.
E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, is dean emeritus of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, former university executive vice president; currently the endowed professor and director of the Center for Advanced Research Training and Innovation (CARTI), and senior scientist in the Center for Birth Defects Research. Dr. Reece reported no relevant disclosures. He is the medical editor of this column. Contact him at obnews@mdedge.com.