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Male breast cancer rare but can be aggressive

Reuters Online :

Men are diagnosed with breast cancer at less than one percent the rate of women, but when they are the disease is often more advanced on average, and they are more likely to die from it, according to an international study.
Researchers led by Mikael Hartman at the National University of Singapore combined cancer registries from Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Singapore and Geneva, Switzerland, with cases dating back to 1970. The data included about 460,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer, and about 2,700 men.
Men were more likely to have the disease that had spread beyond the breast by the time they were diagnosed. In treatment, they had less surgery and radiation than women but similar rates of chemotherapy and hormone treatment. Over the entire time period, men had a 72 percent chance of surviving breast cancer in the five years after a diagnosis, compared to 78 percent in women. "Men who develop a breast lump delay seeing their doctor longer than a comparable woman with similar symptoms," Hartman said in an email to Reuters Health.
"Male breast cancer is rare but men can develop the disease and should be aware that they should seek care if a breast lump develops." His team said in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that previous studies have shown that it typically takes a few months from when men start getting symptoms until they are diagnosed with breast cancer.