A Long-Term Observational Research Study
The medical literature currently cannot answer all the relevant questions for the woman facing cancer during pregnancy. Few oncologists or obstetricians treat more than two or three patients in this situation in an entire career. The only way to gain the necessary knowledge about cancer found and treated during pregnancy is to gather together experience from various hospitals into one single database.
Dr. Elyce Cardonick, a Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician at Cooper, is doing just that. She collects information about the diagnosis, and treatment of cancer in pregnant women. Such information (kept strictly confidential) will help study the effects of a newly diagnosed cancer and its treatment on a concurrent pregnancy. Additionally, the interaction of a pregnancy on the natural history of certain types of cancer will also be studied. Some women have even received chemotherapy during pregnancy and delivered healthy infants.
Dr. Cardonick is also interested in including pregnant women with a history of cancer in a separate database. In both studies, the health of the women and their children are followed yearly in cooperation with the patient’s oncologist, pediatrician and obstetrician.
Dr. Cardonick is available for consultation. Even if you have already delivered your baby, or know of someone with cancer who has delivered, it is not too late to contribute your experience to the growing information about cancer and pregnancy in the database.
For more information about the pregnancy and cancer registry or to become a participant, please call 856.757.7876.
Support the Cancer and Pregnancy Registry
Through your support, we can continue to collect information about the diagnosis, and treatment of cancer in pregnant women. By gathering data from various hospitals into one single database, we are able to better study the effects of newly diagnosed cancers and its effect on concurrent pregnancies as well as the interaction of pregnancy on the natural history of certain types of cancer.
Together, through research, we can work toward a day when women can focus on their pregnancy, not their cancer.