The impact of pregnancy on clinico-pathological features and prognosis of breast cancer remains controversial.We aimed to evaluate the impact of the association of pregnancy with breast cancer on tumor feature and prognosis- overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS).
We defined Pregnancy Associated Breast Cancer (PABC) as breast cancer diagnosed during pregnancy or within a year following delivery. We enrolled PABC patients(pts) treated at our institution between December 2012 and December 2017 , and for each case, one non-PABC control was matched for stage, age, and year of diagnosis. Chis-quare and Fisher’s exact test, the Kaplan-Meier method, and Cox’s regression model were used. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the parameters associated with prognosis.
41 women with PABC were identified; 22 pts were diagnosed during pregnancy and 19 were diagnosed within one year of postpartum. There were more PR negative and triple negative tumors in the PABC(56.1% and 24.4%) than in the non-PABC(31.7% and 4.9%) (p = 0.045 and 0.026 respectively). The HER2 positivity was the same in the two group, both 31.7%. Median DFS in PABC pts was 29.0 months (95% CI range 6.5-51.5 months ) compared with 40.9 months (95% CI range 22.8–58.8 months) in the non-PABC pts(p = 0.167). Median OS in two groups were similar and even longer in PABC group, 82.8 months in PABC pts range(95% CI 39.3-126.5months) compared with 80.1 months (95% CI range 56.7-103.6months) in the non-PABC pts( p = 0.131).
The results show histological features were similar in both groups, except that triple-negative tumors were more common in the PABC group. The survival analyses show similar OS for patients diagnosed with PABC compared with non-PABC patients, and DFS tends to be shorter for PABC but no significant difference was observed.
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All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.