Conservative surgery for breast carcinoma associated with pregnancy

Thirty-five patients with pregnancy-associated breast carcinoma diagnosed between 1985 and 1995 were identified and characterized from a prospectively generated database Twenty-two of these patients had stage 1 or 2 disease and were therefore potential candidates for conservative surgical management. The median age was 36 years. Two thirds of the patients were pregnant at the time of diagnosis; the median gestational age of the fetus at diagnosis was 7 months. Twenty-one of the 22 of the patients presented with a palpable mass. The majority of tumors were estrogen-receptor negative. Nine patients were treated with breast-conservation therapy, and 13 were treated with mastectomy. In the breast-conservation therapy group, there were three distant recurrences and no local recurrences with a median follow-up of 24 months. In the mastectomy group, two patients developed distant metastases and one developed a local recurrence with a median follow-up of 28 months. The results of breast-conservation therapy are similar to the results of mastectomy for stage 1 and 2 cancers associated with pregnancy. Therefore, breast-conservation therapy is an option for selected patients with pregnancy-associated breast cancer.