Adverse birth outcomes of adolescent and young adult women diagnosed with cancer during pregnancy

Abstract

Background: We examined adverse birth outcomes among adolescent and young adult women diagnosed with cancer (AYA women, ages 15-39 years) during pregnancy. Methods: We linked data from the Texas Cancer Registry, vital records, and Texas Birth Defects Registry to identify all singleton births to AYA women diagnosed during pregnancy from January 1999 to December 2016. We compared prevalence of adverse live birth outcomes between AYA women and women without cancer (matched 1:4 on age, race and ethnicity, and year). Among AYA women, we used log-binomial regression to identify factors associated with these outcomes. Statistical tests were 2-sided. Results: AYA women had 1271 singleton live births and 20 stillbirths. AYA women (n=1291) were 33.3% Hispanic and 9.8% non- Hispanic Black and most commonly had breast (22.5%), thyroid (19.8%), and gynecologic (13.3%) cancers. Among live births, AYA women had a higher prevalence of low birth weight offspring (30.1% vs 9.0%), very preterm (5.7% vs 1.2%), and preterm birth (25.1% vs 7.2%); cesarean delivery (44.3% vs 35.2%); and low Apgar score (2.7% vs 1.5%), compared with women without cancer (n=5084) (all P