Male Breast Cancer: An 8-year experience in a single tertiary oncology centre in India

Male breast cancer is a rare disease with a paucity of published literature on this topic. The purpose of this study was to report our experience with male breast cancer, focusing on the need of pooling of multi-institutional data for these patients.

A retrospective review of 23 male patients with carcinoma breast from 2008 to 2015 was performed. All documented data on patient and tumour characteristics, treatment and clinical outcome information were analyzed.

The median age at diagnosis was 54 years. Majority of our patients had Stage III disease (52.2%) with infiltrating ductal carcinoma (82.6%) being the commonest histology. Estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor positivity was seen in 91.3% and 78.26% patients respectively while Her-2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor-2) positivity was seen only in one patient. All patients underwent surgery and adjuvant radiation therapy was used in 10 (43.5%) patients. All patients except one received systemic chemotherapy. The 5-year disease-free survival was found to be 78%. Median follow-up was 40 months (6 68 months).

Unfortunately, in the face of the limitation of current scientific knowledge in determining the optimal treatment strategy for male patients with breast cancer we recommend that there is an urgent need for publishing multi-institutional experience with these tumours. Hence, allowing the physicians in forming guidelines with the goal of improving clinical outcomes for these patients.