Pregnant women should receive extra cancer tests, urges specialist

A LEADING cancer specialist has called for doctors to perform extra tests on pregnant women to reduce the risk of failing to detect breast cancer.

Dr Blanca Hernando, a Spanish oncologist, has warned that diagnosis is too often delayed because both doctors and pregnant women assume that lumps in the breast are due to normal hormonal changes.

Speaking at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Edinburgh at the weekend, Dr Hernando of the University Hospital Clinic in Valencia, said that the threat of breast cancer in pregnant women was not uncommon.