CDC: Women Diagnosed Soon After Giving Birth at Higher Risk

Women diagnosed with breast cancer soon after giving birth may have a lower chance of surviving the disease, according to researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Maura Whiteman and her colleagues, reporting on more than 2,000 advanced breast cancer patients younger than 45 who enrolled in a study during the early 1980s, said 725 had died as of 1999.

About 64 percent of women who had given birth more than a year before diagnosis were still alive 15 years later. But among those diagnosed within a year of childbirth, the survival rate was only 42 percent.

The study "shouldn't alarm the average pregnant woman," Whiteman told attendees at the annual meeting of CDC epidemiologists. But she said a woman who develops breast cancer soon after having a baby "may want to consider that when weighing treatment options."

Other sources: Centers for Disease Control, Dallas Morning News