Breast cancer in men
The occurrence of breast cancer in men is rather rare, but nevertheless not excluded. As a rule, a change in the tissue in the male breast can be palpated at an early stage due to the significantly lower proportion of fat and glands, which allows a diagnosis to be made at an early stage. In this way, a therapy can be started quickly, which significantly improves the prognosis.
However, many men are unaware that they too can develop breast cancer, which means that regular self-sampling of the breast is not possible. So if there is a lump, it is usually detected late, which explains the overall poorer survival rate of a man with breast cancer compared to a breast cancer patient. Thus the same applies to both men and women: one’s own breast should be palpated regularly so that possible changes can be recognized and treated early on.
Palpable changes are often detected earlier in men than in women. These include lumps, ulcers, retractions of the nipple or discharge from the mammary gland. As with women, a mammography and an ultrasound examination of the breast are performed for diagnostic purposes.
However, since men have denser breast tissue, these examinations are not always conclusive. A reliable diagnosis is therefore only a sample of the suspicious region (biopsy). An MRI should also be performed to show whether the cancer has already grown into the breast wall. A skeletal scintigraphy to exclude bone metastases is also useful.
