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Pregnancy after breast cancer
1 Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center and West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, and
2 Yale University Medical School, New Haven, CT
Every year, about one in four patients diagnosed with breast cancer will be premenopausal. Many of these women still desire pregnancy either to start a family or to extend the family they now have. This article focuses on the risk of breast cancer recurrence and mortality for women who have been successfully treated and want to become pregnant. The news is generally good. Evidence is growing that a subsequent pregnancy will not adversely affect their survival, although it is prudent to wait 2 years after diagnosis, when the risk of recurrence lessens, before trying to conceive. Neither surgery nor radiation therapy has been shown to affect the ability of breast cancer survivors to become pregnant or to have a normal child. The risk of amenorrhea following chemotherapy, however, is relatively high, especially among women over 40, and is dependent on the type of chemotherapy used and the cumulative dose. Several strategies for preserving fertility after breast cancer treatment are discussed, as are the ethical implications.
| Commun Oncol 2007;4:331–348 | full text |  160 kb |