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<\/p>\nIn a recent interview, Jacob said she decided to open a clinic dedicated to pregnant cancer patients five year ago when she saw how difficult it was for these women to navigate the health-care system.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re helping them in both the best moment of their life and the worst,\u201d Jacob said.<\/p>\n
Pregnant women with cancer can end up moving between multiple specialists \u2014 oncologists, surgeons, and obstetricians \u2014 each offering separate recommendations, Jacob said. These women end up feeling like they are being given \u201cdifferent pieces of a puzzle without seeing the full image.\u201d <\/p>\n
The clinic\u2019s goal, Jacob explained, is to centralize decision-making so patients no longer have to co-ordinate their own care while coping with cancer and pregnancy simultaneously. \u201cWe want to put the puzzle together so the patient doesn\u2019t have to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The clinic operates out of the obstetrics floor at the CHUM. Whenever a patient is referred to her, Jacob assembles a multidisciplinary team that can include surgeons, oncologists, pharmacists, neonatologists and high-risk pregnancy specialists. Together, they tailor treatment timelines around both cancer progression and fetal development.<\/p>\n
The clinic has also begun expanding its research activities over the last year, while other Quebec hospitals are increasingly turning to the CHUM team for guidance with their own pregnant cancer patients, Jacob said.<\/p>\n
After Loblegnon\u2019s diagnosis at a hospital in Longueuil, Que., on Montreal\u2019s South Shore, she said she was immediately transferred to the CHUM. She met with Jacob and her team, who began thinking about the best approach to treat her.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest challenges is timing treatment around a pregnancy, said oncologic surgeon Rami Younan, who operated on Loblegnon.<\/p>\n
Chemotherapy drugs and dosages are difference for pregnant women compared with other patients. Many cancer drugs risk causing birth defects or even the loss of the fetus, says Guy Souli\u00e8res, a hematologist-oncologist and spokesperson for the Canadian Cancer Society.<\/p>\n
Because of that risk, chemotherapy is avoided during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, when fetal organs are forming, Jacob said.<\/p>\n
Loblegnon began treatment after 13 weeks, in July 2024; weekly chemotherapy sessions left her exhausted. Her care required constant communication between multiple teams, said Younan. Treatment schedules, monitoring, and delivery planning all had to be carefully aligned to protect both mother and baby.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe co-ordination was perfect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added that even the timing of her caesarean section had to be carefully planned. Chemotherapy weakens the immune system, increasing the risk of infection and complications during surgery, he said. This means delivery had to be scheduled at a moment that balanced both Loblegnon\u2019s recovery and her baby\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n
A month after giving birth, Loblegnon underwent a full mastectomy.<\/p>\n
Because cases like Loblegnon\u2019s are so rare, doctors face a lack of large-scale research to guide treatment. \u201cWhen we have less than one per cent of cases, we can\u2019t obtain meaningful numbers,\u201d Souli\u00e8res said in an interview. <\/p>\n
Doctors say the clinic\u2019s centralized model is especially important because pregnant women with cancer are so uncommon. By concentrating patients in one specialized centre, the CHUM can build expertise, compare outcomes and develop research that could eventually help shape treatment standards elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Today, Loblegnon\u2019s fourth child, Theo Jr., is one-and-a-half years old and in perfect health. During the interview, he moved around the room on his own, going from his mother\u2019s arms to the laps of the two doctors who had saved her life.<\/p>\n
\u201dThis is why we do our job,\u201d said Jacob, looking at Theo and his mother.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 24, 2026.<\/p>\n
Charlotte Glorieux, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a recent interview, Jacob said she decided to open a clinic dedicated to pregnant cancer patients five…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-690646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}