By Donna V. Scaglione
TV star Giuliana Rancic can still become a mother even though she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, a top medical oncologist specializing in women's cancers says.
“Just because she has breast cancer does not mean she can’t be a mother,” Don Dizon, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics-gynecology and medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, tells Newsmax Health.
The 37-year-old co-host of “E! News” and wife of “Apprentice” winner Bill Rancic shocked her fans Monday by announcing her cancer diagnosis. She had been undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments in an effort to become a mother for the first time — and Giuliana says she’s determined to try again to have a baby after she receives cancer treatment.
In general, doctors don’t discourage women who have had breast cancer from trying to conceive. Studies have shown that pregnancy doesn’t cause cancer to return after successful treatment, and might even offer some protection from it. Dizon says this is known as the “healthy mother effect.”
“If a woman who has had breast cancer is able to become pregnant and deliver a healthy baby — those women appear to have a better prognosis,” he says.
Rancic says her cancer was discovered after her doctor encouraged her to have a mammogram before undergoing a third IVF treatment. Her previous treatment, though successful in making her pregnant, ended in miscarriage in 2010.
If she had not been undergoing fertility treatments, the cancer may not have been found until it was too late, Rancic says. “This baby will have saved my life,” she said on NBC’s “Today Show” when she announced her diagnosis.
It is unclear why Rancic’s physician ordered a mammogram when she is only 37, notes Dizon. (Only 5 percent of breast cancer cases involve women under 40.) Rancic may have felt a lump, or perhaps her doctor was being cautious considering her aunt is a breast cancer survivor, says Dizon.
As with Elizabeth Edwards, who died of breast cancer last year, Rancic’s use of IVF has prompted questions about whether the treatment causes breast cancer. However, a large European study published late last year in the journal Human Reproduction found that women who have IVF are not at an increased risk of cancer.
The study, which looked at 25,000 Swedish women who had IVF compared with 1.4 million who hadn’t undergone the treatment, actually found a decreased risk for women undergoing IVF, including a 24 percent reduction in breast cancer and 39 percent reduction in cervical cancer.
“In general, IVF treatments are not associated with breast cancer risk,” Dizon says.
Whether Rancic’s fertility will be affected by her cancer depends on the type of cancer she has, he says. If it’s non-invasive, it likely will be treated with surgery, then radiation to help prevent recurrence, which wouldn’t impact her ability to conceive. However, an invasive cancer requiring chemotherapy, which can damage ovaries, would prompt some planning for future pregnancy, he says. He recommends such patients meet with a specialist about storing embryos before having chemotherapy.
Doctors previously advised women to wait five years after a breast cancer diagnosis before trying to conceive, but Dizon says “there is really no reason why five years marks the safe period.”
Experts generally agree today that waiting two years after successful treatment before trying to conceive is enough.
“It’s just a very scary thing to face your own mortality,” says Dizon, co-director for the Center for Sexuality, Intimacy and Fertility at the Program in Women’s Oncology at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, R.I.
“You have to deal with something so life-changing before going on to something else that is so life-changing, like having a child.”
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