Male breast cancer - A reappraisal of clinical and biologic indicators of prognosis

Between 1970 and 1998, 90 cases of male breast cancer with available pathol ogical material were retrieved. The disease often presented in aged patient s (median-66 years) and as advanced stage (stage III/IV-51%). Excluding sta ge IV disease. the neoplasia were predominantly ductal invasive carcinomas, NOS (not otherwise specified) (92%), grade I and grade 2 (94%), positive f or estrogen and progesterone receptors (72% and 74%), negative for androgen receptors (100%), p53 negative (95%), c-erbB-2 negative (88%) and DNA aneu ploid (73%). Assessment of disease outcome is determined by stage at time o f diagnosis, and axillary lymph node status was the only parameter found to have a statistically significant correlation with either disease-free inte rval or overall survival (p < 0.001) by multivariate analysis. Clinically u seful information on the probability of relapse can be added by determining c-erbB-2 (p = 0.02) an progesterone receptors (p = 0.04) in stage III and tumor ploidy (p = 0.04) in pN1 subgroups of patients.