Sometimes people are great / Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis

[Morgan]

I've just had a long conversation with an Aussie friend about Kylie Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis and related stuff.

It's a major news story in Ireland and the UK, as well as Australia. She's 37 and just diagnosed, and so is my friend's cousin. Hope they both get through it ok.

Apart from the shock that people there have had about Kylie's age, he's concerned about what my own situation means, and am I at risk of breast cancer.

He was kind of embarrassed about asking, but it felt really, er, sweet, that he'd want to ask and make sure I was all right...

Morgan

[Betsy]

Uh, yeah, guys can get breast cancer whether or not they have gynecomastia. I would imagine the risk increases then due to the increase of estrogen sensitivity. I'm not sure what the impact of the tissue removal you had done has, if any.

A GP could do an exam as well as show you how to do a self exam.

[Morgan]

Thanks, Betsy,

Maybe I should've posted in the 'In the News' section, I was more taken with the Kylie link and my friend's concern than the health issue :)

From what I've read, there's no proven increase in risk in a guy with gynaecomastia, but it does seem logical to expect one.

I do a self-exam now that things have settled post-surgery, and I had a mammogram pre-surgery.

From what I've read, transmen still need mammograms post-surgery. For this reason, and because I still have a some tissue remaining (just not at all what was expected), I'd hope to continue getting screened.

Morgan

[CC]

From what I've read, there's no proven increase in risk in a guy with gynaecomastia, but it does seem logical to expect one.

Morgan

you should count yourself fortunate your karyotype came back as 46xy.Take a look at the following and then scrool down to "complications"
http://www.emedicine.com/PED/topic1252.htm.

Now that I have refreshed my memory in regard to this,I ought to go in search of a hole digging device
:outtahere

Its moments like this when I am thankfull for such shocking memory retrival :partysmil

Ciao

Canice.

[Morgan]

Hi Canice

The authors say that the incidence of breast cancer "may" be higher, by quite a high figure. They don't know for sure, probably because there hasn't been enough documentation of cases.

The only report that I've seen that came near to "conclusive" data was on men with gynaecomastia and/or breast lumps, which seems to me to be a classification designed for a high incidence of breast cancer.

I'm not sure if the group included men with Klinefelter's - I'll dig out the reference if I can.

Morgan

[Morgan]

Hmm. I reckon I was probably wrong before...

The article I remembered was this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12662229&dopt=Abstract
which suggested ~5% incidence among men with gynaecomastia and/or lumps. Seems self fulfilling to me.

An endocrinology paper here http://www.leeds.ac.uk/acb/annals/annals_pdf/Nov01/596.pdf says that Klinefelter's and cases caused by mumps are known risk factors.

This article suggests that there's no established link, Klinefelter's or otherwise: http://www.emedicine.com/plastic/topic125.htm and this one highlights a high risk associated with 47,XXY diagnosis: http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic934.htm Both papers, on the same website, were updated this year.

Just reading through these, I think that part of the problem is that the term gynaecomastia is used to describe a huge variation in size and causes, most of which are not particularly significant.

I'd reckon that having breasts increases your risk of getting breast cancer, whatever your gender or their cause. It doesn't affect my own feelings about my body, but it does make me want to take care of it.

[nimo6211]

Isn't life just the funny guy! It is bad enough when I was flat-chested while everyone else my age were trying to hide them, I thought they were silly and ungrateful because I had to do all kinds of things to try and pretend I had them too but not as enhanced as theirs. I wore a bra stuffed with toilet paper, and now we have them on men and they are having them removed. In the meantime, I had silicone enhanced augmented ones 21 years ago and would like to have them reduced because they are too large and droopy but do not really want to go through that process again (besides I cannot afford it anyway).

And then you have people like poor Kylie Minogue. Life is so cruel, it really is not that funny!