Skin cancer

The topic of breast diseases is usually associated with women's health. However, men are also susceptible to breast diseases, including cancerous ones.

The risk of developing breast cancer in men is 1 in 1,000, which is a fairly high indicator: this is the risk of developing the disease in a man throughout his life. According to statistics, 350-400 cases of the disease are diagnosed annually in the UK, and 2,240 new cases were detected in the United States in 2013. It is known that 400 people die from breast cancer in the United States every year (for comparison, about 40,000 people per year are known among women in the United States).

Risk factors

• age, as a rule, is over 60 years;
• a history of chest radiation exposure (for example, treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma);
• gynecomastia due to taking estrogens/drugs/poisons, after infections, after surgical castration;
• the presence of cases of the disease in the family history (male or female);
• Kleinfelter syndrome (genetic a disease among men characterized by the presence of an extra X chromosome);
• cirrhosis of the liver;
• testicular diseases (orchitis due to mumps; testicular injury, cryptorchidism);
• obesity – body mass index of 30 or more.

Clinical manifestations

Clinical manifestations of breast cancer are non-specific, so it is often not immediately diagnosed.

Among the manifestations of the disease, the most common are:

• discharge from the nipple, which may be bloody;
• swelling of the breast;
• ulcer on the skin of the chest wall;
• retraction of the nipple;
• enlargement of the axillary lymph nodes.

Principles of treatment

The choice of therapy depends on the stage of the disease and is fundamentally similar to breast cancer therapy in women: surgery, neoadjuvant and adjuvant chemotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, bisphosphonates. In 85% of cases, the tumor is hormone-sensitive, so hormone therapy is widely used in the treatment of this type of cancer.

Important: if a man has been diagnosed with breast cancer in his family, then close relatives (sisters, daughters, and granddaughters) should be tested for a genetic predisposition to this type of cancer.