The following is a summary of “Trends in surgery and survival for T1-T2 male breast cancer: A study from the National Cancer Database,” published in the JANUARY 2023 issue of Surgery by Singh, et al.

Researchers anticipated that men receive more extensive surgery even though early-stage male breast cancer (MBC) may be treated the same way as it does for women.

The National Cancer Database from 2004 to 2016 had information on clinical T1-2 breast cancer patients. The study’s goal was to compare trends between the sexes in operation type and overall survival.

The majority of the 9,782 men and 1,078,105 women were cN0 with AJCC stage I/II illness. Men underwent unilateral mastectomy the most (67.1% vs. 24.1%, P < 0.001), while women underwent partial mastectomy (64.7% vs. 26.4%, P<0.001), with no discernible trend over time. In 2016, ALND was given to almost one-third of males. Males who underwent partial mastectomy had a 42% lower mortality risk than those who underwent total mastectomy (HR 0.58, 95% CI 0.4-0.8, P = 0.003), even though females had better overall survival (HR 0.83, 95% CI 0.73-0.94, P = 0.003).

In conclusion, surgery might be scaled back for MBC to increase survival and comply with existing standards of care.

Reference: americanjournalofsurgery.com/article/S0002-9610(22)00592-X/fulltext