Male breast cancer: experience from a Malaysian tertiary centre.

INTRODUCTION Breast cancer is a rare condition among men with a reported incidence of about one percent. Nevertheless, it is thought to behave similarly in both genders. Due to its rarity, male breast cancer is not widely reported, especially in the Asian population. METHODS In a five-year review of our breast cancer surgery series, about 1.6 percent involved male patients. There was a substantial delay in presentation among those men, whose mean age at presentation was 64 years. RESULTS The majority of patients presented with a painless lump. Histologically, all tumours were ductal in origin and all patients had lower than stage III malignancies. The majority of patients underwent mastectomy and axillary lymph node dissection. All male patients were commenced on adjuvant tamoxifen. The longest survival was 54 months with all patients remaining tumour-free. CONCLUSION Malaysian men are at risk of breast cancer and seem to have a better prognosis.