Male Breast Cancer

Abstract

Male breast cancer represents with 1.5% of male malignancies a rare disease. Compared to the vast amount of data and knowledge in female breast cancer, male breast cancer is less well-researched and explored. Potential risk factors are oestrogen (exogenous or endogenous), gynaecomastia, radiation, exposure to heat and the Klinefelter’s syndrome. Whereas female breast cancer shows a double-peak risk distribution, the risk for males to develop breast cancer increases linearly with age. Bilateral male breast cancer is extremely rare. All kinds of histological tumour types described in female patients were observed in male breast cancer too. The prognosis for male breast cancer is, if at equal stage, comparable to that of female breast cancer. Similar as in their female counterparts, survival of the male patients depends on tumour size and axillary lymph node status, and because of this it depends on an early diagnosis. Oestrogen and progesterone receptor status, however, are of lesser prognostic significance in male breast cancer. Therapeutic advances were analogous to the treatment of female breast cancer. Besides the introduction of less radical surgical procedures, hormonal ablative surgical procedures were replaced by medical therapy. Tamoxifen therapy in nodal-positive patients of tumour stages II and III resulted in 5-year survival rates of 60 to 85%. Even in patients showing distant metastases, response rates of 40 to 60% can be obtained by applying the different chemotherapeutic strategies for female breast cancer patients.