We all know breast cancer strikes women -- a lot of women -- but about 1,700 men also develop the disease each year in the United States. And while their risk of diagnosis is much more hopeful than the reality facing women, men with breast cancer face their own version of a not-so-rosy reality. According to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, men treated for breast cancer face a very real chance of getting cancer again. Their study found that 11.5 percent of men with breast cancer develop second primary cancers -- mostly in the breast, stomach, and skin -- within two months following initial treatment.
"Even more disturbing, we found that men with breast cancer are diagnosed with later-stage disease and that patients with onset of the disease at a young age are even more likely to develop a second cancer," said Hoda Anton-Culver, chief of epidemiology in the UCI School of Medicine.
In light of these findings, researchers recommend men with breast cancer be closely monitored for a second onset of cancer.
