Dr. Janice Walshe:

I have not come across such cases. In terms of psychological distress, we encounter a lot of that among non-pregnant women and, of course, it is even greater among pregnant women. In terms of how one deals with the issue, when I meet a pregnant woman who has cancer, her main concerns relate to the risk to her own welfare and the risk to the foetus. Once it is explained that a termination is not likely to add anything in terms of outcome, that we will navigate the situation in clinical practice on a regular basis and that treatment can be administered safely for the most part, they tend to become less distressed and proceed with treatment.

In regard to Deputy Ó Caoláin's question, such is the rarity of cancer in pregnancy that it is difficult to have a perspective on randomised trials, but we have a considerable amount of data from retrospective studies, cohort studies and case series. These can be in the hundreds in some cases. We can extrapolate from these data to discuss them with our pregnant patients.