Is Pregnancy-Associated Cancer Becoming More Common?

Pregnancy-associated cancers are those that are initially diagnosed during pregnancy or within 12 months of delivery. To determine trends in pregnancy-associated cancer and related maternal and pregnancy outcomes, investigators linked data from an Australian cancer registry, a perinatal database, and hospital records of 781,907 women who delivered from 1994 to 2008.

In all, 1798 pregnancy-associated cancers were identified, most commonly melanoma, breast cancer, and thyroid cancer (46, 29, and 17 per 100,000 pregnancies, respectively). A total of 499 cancers were diagnosed during pregnancy and 1299 were diagnosed postpartum. Pregnancy-associated cancer was almost 50% more common than would have been expected in the general female population …