Survival of breast cancer patients diagnosed during pregnancy or lactation.

This survival study includes 20 breast cancer patients diagnosed during pregnancy and 15 patients diagnosed during the lactation period. The survival rate of these patients is compared with that of ordinary breast cancer patients taking stage of the disease, age and calendar-year at diagnosis into account. The pregnancy group showed a significantly poorer prognosis compared with the control groups. Only 3 out of 20 survived more than 4 years. The tendency of a worse prognosis for the lactation group than for the control group was, however, not significant.