Pregnancy-associated breast cancer - Special features in diagnosis and treatment

For obvious psychological reasons it is difficult to associate
pregnancy - a life-giving period of our existence with
life-threatening malignancies. Symptoms pointing to malignancy are
often ignored by both patients and physicians, and this, together
with the greater difficulty of diagnostic imaging, probably results
in the proven delay in the detection of breast cancers during
pregnancy. The diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer are
becoming more and more important, as the fulfillment of the desire
to have children is increasingly postponed until a later age
associated with a higher risk of carcinoma, and improved cure rates
of solid tumors no longer exclude subsequent pregnancies. The
following article summarizes the special features of the diagnosis
and primary therapy of pregnancy-associated breast cancer with
particular consideration of cytostatic therapy.