Chemotherapy during pregnancy

Chemotherapy during pregnancy has long been thought of as unsafe and the drugs used for treatment can harm the child. However, these days the researchers are trying to collect a comprehensive data to show if this conclusion could be wrong. The researchers from across the globe have been closely observing kids whose mothers received chemotherapy during pregnancy.

 Most of the researches revealed that kids whose mothers receive chemotherapy treatment when they were expecting showed normal development. They did not have suffer from any long term harm because of the exposure of the drugs. When a pregnant woman is diagnosed with cancer, the family is faced with a dilemma of whether to take chemotherapy treatment or not.

The best way to decide this would be to check the stage of cancer in the body of the expecting mother. If the cancer is left untreated, it might spread inside the body of the patient. Although the doctors are willing to give chemotherapy drug treatment to such patients, they are more concerned if fetus is in the first trimester. They suspect that there are chances that this could damage their heart and brain. However, if the pregnancy has gone beyond the first trimester, then the chances of damage to the baby become less.[Get information here in brief : http://www.ecancerchemotherapy.com/ ]

Some chemotherapy side effects may cause the baby to be born prematurely. This might be the reason for such babies to have lesser IQs later in life. They are also known to have problem in their thinking and cognitive skills. So they came to the conclusion that chemotherapy side effects in pregnant women might cause premature birth and this could lead to problems later in life.

Before patients undergo chemotherapy treatment, they are asked to postpone their plans of conceiving. In such cases, the drug can harm the growth of the sperms and can damage the eggs. So even if the egg gets fertilized, it may not lead to the birth of a healthy child.

Thus, when chemotherapy during pregnancy has to be done, the doctors first consider the health of the patient and put her health before the child's safety. Most of the researches done so far have been done on patients with breast cancer and more research is still going on to establish if chemotherapy during pregnancy is safe.