Pregnancies in young women with diagnosis and treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer

Young breast cancer patients who have not yet completed their family planning at the time of diagnosis may still have pregnancy desire at the completion of adequate anticancer treatments and period of follow-up. Indeed, young women advocates have recently highlighted that pregnancy-related concerns have high priority [1]. Despite many physicians remain concerned that pregnancy in breast cancer survivors may have a detrimental prognostic effect by means of endocrine stimulation [2], increasing evidence has become available over the years on the safety of conceiving for patients with prior history of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment [3, 4]. However, there was lack of data on this regard to properly counsel young women with newly diagnosed HER2-positive breast cancer. In addition, considering both the suboptimal use of contraceptive methods among breast cancer patients [5] as well as the apparent lack of gonadotoxicity with the administration of trastuzumab (and/or lapatinib) [6], some physicians may need to counsel young women with HER2-positive breast cancer that have become accidentally pregnant during anti-HER2 targeted therapy. Considering that almost half of breast cancer physicians that have recently responded to a recent survey believe that first-trimester expsoure to trastuzumab is associated with high risk of malformations [2], many women in this situation are likely to be counseled about the need to terminate their pregnancy