Breast‐conserving surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy in pregnancy

While cancer is a leading cause of death in women of childbearing age, its simultaneous occurrence with pregnancy is uncommon, with a reported incidence of 0.07%‐0.1% (1). The malignant neoplasms complicating pregnancy are those most frequently seen in young women: lymphoma, leukemia, melanoma and cancers of the breast, cervix, ovary, thyroid and colon (2, 3). Breast cancer, the most common of them all and, in many areas of the world, the most frequent cause of cancer deaths in women, is also the type of cancer most likely to be seen in pregnancy or lactation (4). This cancer, in association with pregnancy, occurs in three of every 10,000 pregnancies and in 3% of all breast cancer patients (1, 5). Except for delay in diagnosis, no convincing data exist that pregnancy per se adversely influences the prognosis or biology of maternal cancer, and this includes breast cancer as well. There are no firm data which show that there is a greater likelihood of reactivation of cancer during pregnancy. Conversely, there are only a few reports in the literature which indicate that cancer adversely affects pregnancy (6). It is well known, however, that a delay in diagnostic and therapeutic interventions are potentially deleterious to both mother and fetus.