Pregnancy and breast cancer: optimal patient management tactics (a literature review)

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the most widespread malignant neoplasm in Ukraine (20.6 % of all malignant neoplasms). The usual incidence of breast cancer (BC) in women, as of 2019, is 70.3 cases per 100 thousand population. At the moment, BC during pregnancy is rare (only in 0.4 % of all BC cases in women aged 16 to 49 years), the decision on treatment remains difficult for a patient as well as an oncologists. Despite the fact that the treatment of malignant breast disease is usually carried out in non-pregnant women, the problem of tactics for managing patients with different gestation lengths remains unresolved. Thus, the treatment of pregnant women with BC should be guided a multidisciplinary integrated approach to maximize the benefits and minimize the risk to both a mother and a fetus, including the optimal tactics of surgical treatment and chemotherapy. Therapeutic decisions should be based on the stage of disease, tumor morphology, gestational age at diagnosis, and possible pregnancy risks. A promising way of addressing this problem is to conduct more studies to determine the most effective and safest treatment strategies for BC in pregnant women.

Keywords

• breast cancer
• pregnancy
• cancer
• chemotherapy
• radiation