[Pregnancy and fetal development after therapy of Hodgkin's disease]

The post-therapeutic pregnancy data of 122/244 women aged until 40 years who had been treated primarily in Freiburg i. Br. for Hodgkin's disease between 1949 and 1981 were obtained by an inquiry based on questionnaires. All of the 122 patients of the questionnaire group were in remission. 39 out of them (32%) became pregnant one or more times; 38/94 (40%) of these had been irradiated down to the promontory and 1/17 (6%) had been submitted to an irradiation including the pelvis with ovariopexy. The resulting 63 post-therapeutic pregnancies leaded to 41 normal births (65%), three premature infants (5%), two viable children suffering from malformations (3%) and five spontaneous abortions (8%). An interruption was performed in twelve cases (19%). There were no significant divergences from distributions of normal populations with regard to the percentages of normal births and negative variants, even under consideration of comparable literature reports. Neither in the questionnaire group nor in the group of 122 patients whose gynecologic data could only be evaluated by means of the medical records available, there was any indication suggesting an increased risk of morbidity or mortality.