Male Breast Cancer: Treatment Options

If you're a man who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer, you may feel shocked. You have a serious disease and you have some important decisions to make. Perhaps the kind of cancer you have makes it even more surprising. As a guy, hearing your doctor tell you that you have breast cancer is probably not something you ever expected.

You may also be frustrated as you try to find the facts about your condition. Almost all of the information you come across is written for women. If you're a guy, you may not know what to expect.

But while breast cancer is rare in men, anyone can get it. Any cell in your body can become cancerous. So even though men have a very small amount of breast tissue, cancer can develop there, too. You need to know that you're not alone. About 1,450 American men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.

Breast cancer in men and women is very similar. The causes, the staging, and the treatment are similar. And so is the prognosis. Doctors used to think that men with breast cancer had worse chances. But that isn't true. Men and women who have the same stage of breast cancer have the same chances for recovery.

You should know that treatment for breast cancer has come a long way, for both men and women. If you catch it at an early stage, your odds for recovery are excellent. But even the most advanced cancers can usually be treated, possibly improving your quality of life and letting you live longer.

What Are the Treatments?

Treatments for breast cancer in men and women are generally the same. Many men benefit from a combination of different treatments. Here's an overview of the various approaches:

• Surgery. The typical treatment for men is a mastectomy, in which the entire breast is removed. Breast-conserving surgery -- in which just the tumor is taken out -- isn't usually possible for an obvious reason. Men don't have much breast tissue to begin with. The surgeon will also take out one or more of the lymph nodes to see if the cancer has spread.
• Radiation Therapy. Treatment with radioactive rays or particles is standard after surgery. It's used to help kill off any cancer cells that were missed. In some cases, radiation may be the main treatment.
• Chemotherapy. This is treatment with drugs -- either taken by mouth or by injection -- that attack cancer cells. Chemotherapy is often used after surgery to lower the risk of the cancer coming back. For men with advanced or metastatic cancer -- which is cancer that has spread throughout the body -- chemotherapy may be the primary treatment.
• Hormonal Therapy. Some kinds of breast cancer need certain hormones to grow. Hormonal therapy blocks the effects of these hormones, choking the cancer. Hormonal therapy is often more successful in men than in women. That's because more men -- about 75% -- have hormone receptor-positive cancer. Your doctor might use tamoxifen or other drugs. The effects of the new aromatase inhibitors like Arimidex and Femara -- as well as the drug Aromasin, known as an aromatase inactivator -- haven't been studied much in men. Sometimes, removal of the testes is used to reduce the amount of certain male hormones in the system.

  Hormonal therapy is often used after surgery to lower the risk of the cancer coming back. For men with locally advanced or metastatic cancer, it may be the primary treatment.

• Biological Therapy. This is a new approach. Some men have an excess of a protein that makes cancer spread quickly. Herceptin is a drug that's been approved to treat metastatic breast cancer. It stops this protein from making the cancer cells grow. It may also boost your immune system, giving it more strength to fight the cancer itself.