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Pregnancy rate and outcome of pregnancies in long-term survivors of Hodgkin’s lymphoma

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Abstract

Thanks to the increased number of young survivors of Hodgkin’s lymphoma (HL), management of the pregnancies of women who have a history of exposure to chemotherapies and radiation therapy is becoming increasingly common. Many patients and clinicians are worried that pregnancy after the diagnosis of HL may increase the risk of relapse, despite a lack of empirical evidence to support such concerns. In the present study, we included 89 women diagnosed with HL between 2006 and 2015 under the age of 50 years, who were in complete remission and alive without relapse > 1 year after treatment. We determined the pregnancy rate, time to pregnancy, and the disease-free survival. We found no evidence of significant impairment of the fertility of female HL long-term survivors and no evidence that a pregnancy increases the relapse rate among women in remission from HL. Survivors of HL need to consider a range of factors when deciding on future reproduction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency and Organ Transplantation (D.E.T.O.), Hematology Section, University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Francesco Gaudio, Tommasina Perrone, Paola Curci & Giorgina Specchia

  2. Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology, Obstetrics and Gynecology Unit, University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Claudia Nardelli, Paola Masciandaro, Raffaella Depalo & Ettore Cicinelli

  3. Department of Emergency and Organ Transplantation (D.E.T.O.), Pathology Section, University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Filomena Emanuela Laddaga

Authors
  1. Francesco Gaudio
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  2. Claudia Nardelli
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  3. Paola Masciandaro
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  4. Tommasina Perrone
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  5. Filomena Emanuela Laddaga
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Correspondence to Francesco Gaudio.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Gaudio, F., Nardelli, C., Masciandaro, P. et al. Pregnancy rate and outcome of pregnancies in long-term survivors of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Ann Hematol 98, 1947–1952 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-019-03684-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-019-03684-0

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