Can Patients With A Suspected High-Grade Glioma Receive Tumor Treatment During Pregnancy Safely?

Abstract BACKGROUND Diagnosis of a glioma during pregnancy has ethical and medical dilemmas; treatment of the mother may harm the unborn child, but a too conservative approach towards tumor treatment can compromise the survival of the mother. In patients with a suspected high-grade glioma, postponing tumor treatment is undesirable. We collected published cases to describe the given treatments during pregnancy and the outcomes for mother and child. METHODS From Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science, 122 cases were extracted from 65 reports published between 1999 and 2020. We added 7 cases from our center. Cases came from: North-America (54/129), Europe (47/129), Asia (13/129), Middle-East (3/129) and one from Oceania and Africa each; 10 cases were from an unspecified country. The data were analysed with descriptive statistics. RESULTS The median age of the pregnant women was 30 (range 17–48) years; at the time of publication 42% of mothers had deceased. Most frequent symptoms at presentation were high intracranial pressure (35%), seizures (30%) or focal deficits (19%). Patients were diagnosed in each phase of the pregnancy - 30% in the first, 35% in the second and 35% in the last trimester. Twenty-two women decided to terminate the pregnancy (North America 9; Europe 9; international unspecified, Africa, Asia and Middle-East each one case). In sixty-seven percent of women, tumors were operated while pregnant, 70% of those were planned surgery, while in 30% surgery was in performed in an emergency setting. Most women received a resection. In 6 patients tumor surgery was combined with a caesarian section. Histological diagnosis of the tumor was available in 112 patients: anaplastic oligodendroglioma (n=10), anaplastic astrocytoma (n=30), glioblastoma (n=66) or high-grade glioma NOS (n=6). In 10 patients there was a suspected high grade glioma based on MRI imaging. Only 20 patients were treated after surgery whilst still pregnant with either radiotherapy (15/20, 75%), chemotherapy (2/20, 10%) or a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy (3/20, 15%) Other patients received additional treatment after delivery (109/129; 84%). Delivery method was a caesarian section in 60% and vaginal delivery in 21%- in 19% delivery method was not described. In 63% of cesarean sections were brought forward either because of rapid maternal deterioration or to enable maternal treatment after delivery. In 92% a healthy child was born, 7% had a intrauterine fetal death and 1% the child was stillborn. None of the patients who experienced intrauterine fetal death had received radio- or chemotherapy during pregnancy. CONCLUSIONS The majority of pregnant women continue their pregnancy when facing a diagnosis of a high grade glioma. Tumor surgery seemed safe during pregnancy. No adverse events were reported in the limited patients who received radiotherapy (n=15) during pregnancy. For chemotherapy we could not draw any conclusions.