Breast Cancer and Ways to Diagnose the Risk Factors and Treat it During Pregnancy: A Narrative Review

Breast cancer that occurs from the beginning of pregnancy to one year after pregnancy is called pregnancy-associated breast cancer and identifying and knowing its risk factors can greatly affect the health of the mother and the baby/fetus. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate breast cancer during pregnancy.

To this end, published articles until 2019 were obtained from Persian and English databases using keywords such as “pregnancy (Mesh)” and “breast cancer (Mesh)” and included based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria.

Epidemiological findings, pregnancy factors affecting breast cancer, and treatments were collected and presented from several articles.

In general, self-induced abortion, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes were considered as risk factors for breast cancer. In the case of breast cancer, radiotherapy is better in the third trimester. In addition, adjusted mastectomy is preferred to other surgical and chemotherapeutic methods except for the organogenesis period, and a period of three weeks before delivery is associated with minor fetal and maternal complications.