Women presenting with a breast lump during pregnancy should be referred to a breast specialist team and any imaging or further tests should be conducted within the breast multidisciplinary team.

• Ultrasound is used first to assess a discrete lump.
• But if cancer is confirmed, mammography is necessary (with fetal shielding) to assess the extent of disease and the contralateral breast.
• Tissue diagnosis is with ultrasound-guided biopsy for histology rather than cytology, as proliferative change during pregnancy renders cytology inconclusive in many women

Pregnancy itself does not appear to worsen the prognosis for women diagnosed in pregnancy.

However,as pregnancy-associated breast cancer occurs in a younger population who may have features that carry a higher risk of metastases such as high-grade tumours and estrogen receptor negative tumours, these younger women may be expected to have an inferior prognosis.

Women are generally advised to wait for at least 2 years after treatment for breast cancer before conception because of the risk of early relapse.

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When repair of the EAS and/or IAS muscle is being performed, either monofilament sutures such as
3-0 PDS or

modern braided sutures such as 2-0 polyglactin

can be used with equivalent outcomes.

The burying of surgical knots beneath the superficial perineal muscles is recommended to minimise the risk of knot and suture migration to the skin.

For repair of a full thickness EAS tear, either an overlapping or an end-to-end (approximation)
method can be used with equivalent outcomes.

Warm compression during the second stage of labour reduces the risk of OASIS