Cancer of the male breast: analysis of forty-three cases in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Male breast cancer accounts for 0.4% of all male neoplasia in Ibadan, and about 3.4% of all breast cancers in both females and males. The clinical features often presented include mass in breast, skin involvement by fixation and ulceration, sanguinous and serous discharge from the nipple. Symptoms are often delayed, the longest duration in the current series being 36 months. Geographical comparison of the histological types of male breast cancer appears to show that, while papillary carcinoma is commoner in Nigerian than in American and Danish males, on the other hand, infiltrating duct carcinoma appears much more common in the latter than in the former male races. Invasive lobular carcinoma occurs more in Nigerian than in American and Danish males. Mucinous carcinoma, on the other hand, appears much more common in the Danish than in the Nigerian and American males. In all the compared races, prognosis in male breast cancer appears to depend on the age at onset of the disease, the histological type, and presence or absence of lymph node metastases. In Nigerian males mucinous carcinoma appears to offer an excellent prognosis compared with papillary carcinoma, which has better prognostic features in American male patients.