Article Submission Detail:

Article Title: Pregnancy-Associated Breast Cancer: The
Truth...Is Not Yet Known
Author Name: Dr. Kathleen Ruddy
Contact Email Address: drruddy@...
Word Count: 504
Suggested Category: women's health
Keywords: Dr. Kathleen Ruddy,pregnancy,breast cancer,women,
woman,breast cancer awareness,breast cancer research,survival
rate,treatment
Description: Do pregnant women diagnosed with breast cancer
have a reduced chance of survival compared to their non-pregnant
contemporaries? A breast cancer surgeon discusses the latest
research.
Copyright Date: 2009

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Pregnancy-Associated Breast Cancer: The Truth...Is Not Yet Known

"It's not that people are ignorant, but that they know so many
things that just ain't true."
MARK TWAIN

The banner headline on the Susan G. Komen For The Cure website
homepage, "Pregnant Women with Breast Cancer Do Not Have Worse
Outcomes" is unfortunately somewhat misleading. Perhaps the
editor should have read the paper published by Dr. Beadle more
closely. What Dr. Beadle actually reported in her article
published in the March 15, 2009 issue of Cancer was:

"The lack of a statistically significant correlation between
the diagnosis of pregnancy-associated breast cancer and a worse
outcome does not necessarily preclude a true association."

Which is to say, Dr. Beadle cannot say for certain that young
women who are diagnosed with breast cancer when they are
pregnant have the same prognosis as non-pregnant women their same
age. Dr. Beadle goes into great detail to explain the many
flaws in her otherwise excellent study of 652 women, less than 35
years old, who were treated at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
between 1973 and 2006. Dr. Beadle was very thorough in
explaining that the data, though suggestive, were not
definitive. Indeed, it is too soon to jump to conclusions. We've
been down that wrong road before - with hormone replacement
therapy and, more recently, with daily use of alcohol - and it
is not yet clear what the true story is regarding pregnancy and
breast cancer; so, beware banner headlines that proclaim
conclusions that are not yet certain.

In fact, young women who develop breast cancer when they are
pregnant may, indeed, have a worse prognosis and a decreased
survival. We've not studied enough women to be certain about
this. Dr. Beadle went to great lengths to make sure the reader
understood that there are still some missing pieces to this
puzzle, still many things to learn and discover about breast
cancer that occurs in young women when they are pregnant.

Overall, all young women who develop breast cancer have a dismal
prognosis. Pregnancy may or may not make things worse. I hope
that Dr. Beadle and other researchers will be able to clarify
the true character of pregnancy-associated breast cancer in the
near future. But at the present time we simply do not know for
sure whether or not a pregnancy confers a worse outcome for
young women with breast cancer.

The news media and their ambitious headlines typically try to
grab for a hook that will capture a reader, but in their clamor
to be noticed they often fall short of the mark of accurate
reporting. We may forgive CNN for these hungry oversights for
we know they are going for the sensational, not the substantive.
But when the leading breast cancer foundation falls short in
reporting the results of an important paper such as this it
leaves all women less, not more informed. It is a
disappointment, to say the least.

(c) 2009, Dr. Kathleen Ruddy. All rights reserved. Reprints
welcomed so long as article and by-line are not edited and all
links are made live.

Dr. Kathleen Ruddy, Founder and President of the Breast Health
and Healing Foundation, is a breast cancer surgeon who is
dedicated to finding the causes of breast cancer and using that
knowledge to prevent the disease. You can find further details
at http://www.BreastHealthandHealing.com/