Pregnancy After Breast Cancer
Scientists from Belgium and Italy announced they have now shown that getting pregnant is in fact quite safe for women with a history of successfully treated breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most commonly seen form of cancer in women during their childbearing years. And yet, as women postpone starting their families until they are older, and as survival times from breast cancer continue to increase, more and more breast-cancer survivors want to have children after they have completed their breast-cancer treatment.
Most health professionals, however, have long believed that women with a history of breast cancer should not get pregnant. These doctors fear that the increase in estrogen levels that accompany pregnancy and birth might stimulate cancer cells and cause a recurrence
But now comes some good news from the March 2010 European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona. Scientists from Belgium and Italy announced they have now shown that getting pregnant is in fact quite safe for women with a history of successfully treated breast cancer. In fact, their data revealed that pregnancy is not only safe for these women but that it might even improve their chances of survival.
To reach this exciting conclusion, the researchers analyzed data from 14 clinical trials that other scientists had carried out previously. These 14 earlier trials involved 19,476 women with a history of breast cancer, 1,417 of whom had gotten pregnant and 18,059 who had not. The data showed that the patients who became pregnant after successful breast-cancer treatment had a significant reduction of 42 percent in their risk of death compared to those survivors who did not get pregnant.
