Men are prone to breast cancer as well

What used to be a rare, one-off case of a male suffering from breast cancer is becoming more commonplace now, say doctors.

The Tata Memorial Hospital in Parel gets about 30 new cases of men with breast cancer every year. According to the Pune Cancer Registry, 5% of people affected by breast cancer are men.

Most of these cases are detected late because few are aware that breast cancer can afflict males too. Worse, patients don't agree easily for surgery as they believe that breast cancer is a 'women’s illness', say doctors.

Pune-based cancer surgeon Dr Anupama Mane, who operated on three men last year for the disease, said that the biggest hurdle in fighting the illness in men was awareness and acceptance: "The signs of breast cancer are easily detectable. But men don't take these symptoms seriously as they don't think they can get affected," she says.

Dr Anil Heroor, consultant oncologist at Fortis hospital in Mumbai, adds that the disease is more aggressive in men as they have less breast tissue and the cancer progresses faster and infiltrates the muscles attached to the chest wall. Diagnosis also gets difficult as sometimes male breast cancer is mistaken for gynecomastia, a condition that leads to enlargement of male breasts.

According to doctors, breast cancer makes up 1% of the overall cancers in men. But some doctors say the number has been increasing gradually. Dr SH Advani, breast cancer specialist at Jaslok hospital says, "Breast cancer afflicts men between 45 and 55 years. We see at least 1 male in 10 breast cancer patients." Agrees Dr Shona Nag, medical oncologist at Sahyadri Hospital in Pune: "The disease is mostly seen in men above 45 years of age."

Doctors at the Tata Memorial Hospital have been collecting data on male breast cancer patients, and are analysing it to understand the disease better.

So far, the study shows that the causes of breast cancer in men and women are different too. However, in males, breast cancer is usually hereditary, and sometimes also brought on by hormonal changes," says Dr Nag.