Faculty Member Joins Cardiology Colleagues for Study on Pregnant Cancer Survivors

Cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation are fraught with side effects that can impact a patient’s health years after treatment. Cardiovascular complications during and following cancer treatment are an underappreciated side effect that has resulted in an emerging medical subspecialty called Cardio-Oncology. People planning pregnancy following cancer treatment are particularly high-risk for cardiovascular complications, which has encouraged a new team to study this issue. 

A Pregnancy and Cardio-Oncology Team has recently been formed to study pregnancy and cardiac outcomes in cancer survivors. Dr. Cindy Maxwell - Professor with UofT ObGyn, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Division at Sinai Health and UHN Congenital Cardiac Centre for Adults Program in the Reproductive Section - has joined forces with UHN Cardiologists Dr. Dinesh Thavendiranathan and Dr. Candice Silversides.

The team has had several successes including two publications, one entitled “Cardiac Outcomes in Pregnant Women With Treated Cancer” and a second published in June 2020 entitled “Impact of Cancer Therapy-Related Cardiac Dysfunction on Risk of Heart Failure in Pregnancy.”

Dr. Montserrat Carrillo Estrada, a Cardiology Fellow at University of Toronto and UHN/Sinai Health, has been working with the group and was recently awarded the Hold’em for Life Oncology Fellowship to support her research project “Cardiac Outcomes in Pregnant Cancer Survivors: A Prospective Cohort Study” for 2020-2021. Dr. Carrillo Estrada completed her medical school and internal medicine training at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and the team is very excited to support her project moving forward.

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