PREGNANCY AND OFFSPRING AFTER THE APPEARANCE OF BREAST-CANCER

The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of pregna ncy in breast cancer prognosis of women under the age of 35 years. Two hundred and forty-three women with breast cancer, from three oncology departments in Athens, were investigated. Twenty-one got pregnant (7. 91%) 7-100 months after breast cancer diagnosis and in a median time p eriod of 31 months. All women had mastectomy apart from 2 who had only lumpectomy as surgical procedure. Thirteen of 21 were treated with ra diotherapy and 17 of 21 had also adjuvant chemotherapy mainly with CMF for 6 cycles. Sixteen children from 14 mothers were born and the rest of the patients underwent an abortion between the 2nd and 5th month o f pregnancy. AU children were healthy and grew up normally up to the a ge of 12-142 months (end of the study) and their median age of 51 mont hs. Only 2 patients had stage III disease at diagnosis while the remai ning 19 had stage I-IIb. Three cancer recurrences were observed (14.3% ) after 7-84 months. One patient had a second primary-ovarian cancer 6 0 months after mastectomy. Recurrence rate and survival compared with those of nonpregnant women of the same age and the stages of disease w ere not different. To conclude: the present study indicates that healt hy offsprings can be delivered from breast cancer patients, and pregna ncy does not seem to play any role in tumor recurrence.