Just like the treatment options decided upon for breast cancer in a woman, a physician's treatment options for breast cancer in a man depend upon how advanced the patient's disease is. If the only involved area is the breast itself, the patient has what is called localized disease . If the patient's disease also includes the basin of lymph nodes underneath the arm, then the patient has local-regional disease .
Physicians treat each type of disease differently.
However, a new surgical procedure known as sentinel lymph node biopsy is being used in many hospitals as a less invasive method of determining whether or not disease has even spread to the lymph nodes. If it hasn't, then the surgeon does not need to remove all the lymph nodes under the arm. Not only is the patient spared a more major surgery, but he is also spared the side effects that often accompany complete removal of the lymph nodes. After mastectomy , sentinel lymph node biopsy and, in lymph node-positive patients, complete removal of the under arm lymph nodes, some physicians recommend radiation therapy. There is disagreement in the literature as to how beneficial radiation therapy may be.