Is it possible for males to be diagnosed with breast cancer? Know symptoms and risk factors
Breast cancer is most often found in women, but men can get breast cancer too. About one out of every 100 breast cancers diagnosed in the United States is found in a man.
Invasive ductal carcinoma. The cancer cells begin in the ducts and then grow outside the ducts into other parts of the breast tissue. According to Dr Sajjan Rajpurohit, Senior Director, Oncology, Max Hospital Shalimar Bagh, male breast cancer is a rare cancer that begins as a growth of cells in the breast tissue of men.
Signs and symptoms of male breast cancer can include:
1. A painless lump or thickening of the skin on the chest.
2. Changes to the skin covering the chest, such as dimpling, puckering, scaling or changes in the colour of the skin.
3. Changes to the nipple, such as changes in the skin colour or scaling, or a nipple that begins to turn inward.
Causes
It’s not clear what causes male breast cancer.
- Male breast cancer starts when cells in the breast tissue develop changes in their DNA. A cell’s DNA holds the instructions that tell the cell what to do. In healthy cells, the DNA gives instructions to grow and multiply at a set rate.
- In cancer cells, the DNA changes give different instructions. The changes tell the cancer cells to make many more cells quickly. Cancer cells can keep living when healthy cells would die. This causes too many cells.
- The cancer cells might form a mass called a tumour. The tumour can grow to invade and destroy healthy body tissue. In time, cancer cells can break away and spread to other parts of the body. When cancer spreads, it’s called metastatic cancer.
