A son after breast cancer, cutting-edge Genoa
Being able to give birth to a child even after breast cancer: a dream that in Italy today only five patients under 40 out of a hundred are able to realize. It is therefore in Genoa, the world capital of oncofertility, where twenty years ago the Policlinico San Martino was the first hospital in Italy to establish a collaboration between oncology and the medically assisted procreation center, that the conference “Back from Sant ‘Antonio” on the news in the fight against the most widespread neoplasm. Last year, in Liguria, there were 12,500 new cancer diagnoses: of these, 1,700 affected the breast. And 6 percent of cases are found in women under 40, who often have not yet had children when they undergo the diagnosis. “Today the low percentage of young patients who manage to have a child after breast cancer contrasts with the 50 percent of women who, at the time of diagnosis, declare that they want motherhood”, explains Professor Lucia Del Mastro, ordinary and director of the medical oncology clinic of the San Martino hospital. This is why the results of the Positive study, presented in the United States at the international meeting in San Antonio, involving 518 women aged 42 and younger with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer are so important. «The therapy after the operation in these cases lasts five years – explains Del Mastro – and these women have to wait for it to finish before attempting a pregnancy. The study shows that if antihormonal treatment is stopped after 18 months, for two years before resuming, pregnancy is safe and does not increase the risk of disease recurrence. The good news is that more than 60 percent of these patients completed their pregnancies happily. (video service by Erica Manna)