When the topic of breast cancer comes up it is usually associated with women, but it is possible for men to have breast cancer too. A new study shows women with breast cancer live, on average, two years longer than men with the same kind of cancer.
The reasoning
Researchers believe men have a shorter life expectancy than women because men aren’t typically looking for the warning signs and are usually slow to seek treatment.
“It’s not really been on the radar screen to think about breast cancer in men,” said Dr. David Winchester, a breast cancer surgeon in NorthShore University HealthSystem in suburban Chicago who was not involved in the study.
According to an article in USA Today, researchers analyzed 10 years of national data on breast cancer cases, from 1998 to 2007. A total of 13,457 male patients diagnosed during those years were included, versus 1.4 million women. The database contains about 75 percent of all U.S. breast cancer cases.
The men who were studied lived an average of about eight years after being diagnosed, compared with more than 10 years for women. The study doesn’t indicate whether patients died of breast cancer or something else.
Breast cancer, rare in men
According to WebMD, breast cancer in men is a very rare disease. This is possibly due to their smaller amount of breast tissue and the fact that men produce smaller amounts of hormones like estrogen that are known to affect breast cancers in women. Some researchers believe the tumors found in men may be biologically different than those found in women. More studies are needed to confirm this.
In fact, only about 1 in 100 breast cancers affect men and only about 10 men in a million will develop breast cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 2,300 cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in men in 2009.
