PREGNANCY SAFETY AFTER BREAST-CANCER

Many more young breast cancer patients will be seeking medical advice about pregnancy, because oophorectomy is no longer performed adjuvantl y, and more women are bearing children in later years. In the meager a mount of literature on the topic, it has been observed that breast can cer patients who subsequently become pregnant have as good a survival rate as those with no subsequent pregnancy. In particular the case-mat ching studies attempt to eliminate the obvious factor of pregnancy occ urring only in those with a good prognosis. Survival in cases with sub sequent pregnancy is reported in some studies as better than in the co ntrols with no posttreatment pregnancy. All reports are retrospective, are composed of small numbers of patients, were gathered over several decades, and rely on clinicians' memories, because subsequent pregnan cy has not been recorded systematically. For example, the largest stud y includes 136 patients accumulated over 50 years. Assuming that only a small percentage of fertile breast cancer patients become pregnant, the majority appear to have been ''lost to follow-up'' and unreported. In summary, the limited literature on pregnancy subsequent to breast cancer does not allow one to be certain about its effect. Regarding ad vice to the individual patient who has decided to become pregnant, mos t clinicians traditionally have recommended a delay of 2 years or more to allow aggressive disease to become manifest.