General Information About Breast Cancer Treatment During Pregnancy–Health Professional Version
Incidence
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in pregnant and postpartum women and occurs in about 1 in 3,000 pregnant women. The average patient is between the ages of 32 years and 38 years. Because many women are choosing to delay childbearing, it is likely that the incidence of breast cancer during pregnancy will increase.
Anatomy
Diagnostic Evaluation
The natural tenderness and engorgement of the breasts of pregnant and lactating women may hinder detection of discrete masses and early diagnosis of breast cancer. Delays in diagnosis are common, with an average reported delay of 5 to 15 months from the onset of symptoms. Because of this delay, cancers are typically detected at a later stage than in a nonpregnant, age-matched population.
The following tests and procedures may be used to diagnose breast cancer during pregnancy:
- Breast self-examination.
- Clinical breast examination.
- Ultrasound.
- Biopsy and hormone receptor assays.
- Mammography.
To detect breast cancer, pregnant and lactating women should consider practicing self-examination and undergo a clinical breast examination as part of the routine prenatal examination by a doctor. If an abnormality is found, diagnostic approaches such as ultrasound and mammography may be used. With proper shielding, mammography poses little risk of radiation exposure to the fetus. Mammograms are only used, however, to evaluate dominant masses and to locate occult carcinomas in the presence of other suspicious physical findings.
Because at least 25% of mammograms in pregnancy may be negative in the presence of cancer, a biopsy is essential for the diagnosis of any palpable mass. Diagnosis may be safely accomplished with a fine-needle aspiration, core biopsy, or excisional biopsy under local anesthesia. To avoid a false-positive diagnosis as a result of misinterpretation of pregnancy-related changes, the pathologist should be advised that the patient is pregnant.
Breast cancer pathology is similar in age-matched pregnant and nonpregnant women. Hormone receptor assays using a competitive binding assay are usually negative in pregnant patients with breast cancer, but this may be the result of receptor binding by high serum estrogen levels associated with the pregnancy. Enzyme immunocytochemical receptor assays are more sensitive than competitive binding assays. A study that used both assay methods indicated similar receptor positivity between pregnant and nonpregnant women with breast cancer. The study concluded that increased estrogen levels during pregnancy could result in a higher incidence of receptor positivity detected with immunohistochemistry than is detected by radiolabeled ligand-binding assay because of competitive inhibition by high levels of endogenous estrogen.
Prognosis
Overall survival of pregnant women with breast cancer may be worse than survival of nonpregnant women at all stages; however, this may be primarily the result of delayed diagnosis. Termination of pregnancy has not been shown to have any beneficial effect on breast cancer outcome and is not usually considered as a therapeutic option.
Source: PDQ® Adult Treatment Editorial Board. PDQ Breast Cancer Treatment During Pregnancy. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute.