That lack of awareness means few men see a doctor before their breast cancer has advanced, so ''survival has not been as high as in women,'' said Donegan, the American Cancer Society's expert on male breast cancer. And it meant that Lowery's family spent hours hunting for the scarce information available on male breast cancer. Even his surgeon had had only one male patient previously. The good news is that doctors do understand male breast cancer fairly well. They know that men are at increased risk if many women in their families have had breast cancer.
Radiation exposure is another risk factor.
In men, tumors usually develop under the nipple, which then can become inverted, Donegan said. Men get the same treatment as women. For Lowery, that saga began when he mentioned a growth on his shoulder to his daughter. She thought it looked like skin cancer and insisted he see a doctor right away, even though he was visiting her home in Oregon. Lowery turned out to have melanoma, but during that visit the doctor also spotted the lump in his left breast and delivered the additional bad news.