Male breast cancer: diagnosis stages, treatment and survival in a country with limited resources (Burkina Faso)

BACKGROUND: Male breast cancer is a rare and less known disease. Therapeutic modalities affect survival. In Burkina Faso, male breast cancers are diagnosed in everyday practice, but the prognosis at short-, middle-, and long-term remains unknown. The objective of this study is to study the diagnosis stages, therapeutic modalities, and 5-year survival in male breast cancer at the General Surgery Unit of Yalgado Ouedraogo University Hospital from 1990 to 2009. METHODS: A cohort longitudinal study concerning cases of breast cancer diagnosed in man. Survival was assessed using the Kaplan–Meier method and survival curves were compared through the LogRank test. RESULTS: Fifty-one cases of male breast cancer were followed-up, i.e., 2.6% of all breast cancers. Stages III and IV represented 88% of cases. Eleven patients (21.6%) were at metastatic stage. Patients were operated in 60.8% of cases. The surgery included axillary dissection in 25 (80.6%) out of 31 cases. Lumpectomy was performed on 6.5% of patients (2 cases). Fifteen (29.4%) and 11 (21.6%) patients underwent chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, respectively. The FAC protocol was mostly used. Radiation therapy was possible in two cases. The median deadline for follow-up was 14.8 months. A local recurrence was noticed in 3.2% of cases. The overall 5-year survival rate was 49.9%. The median survival was over 5 years for stages I and II. It was 54 down to 36 months for stages III and IV. CONCLUSION: Diagnosis is late. The lack of immunohistochemistry makes it difficult to define the proportion of their hormonal dependence. Surgery is the basic treatment. Five-year survival is slow and the median survival depends on the diagnosis stage. It can be improved through awareness-raising campaigns and the conduct of individual screening.