Thought It Only Affected Women... A Disease That Claimed the Lives of 70 Men Over 5 Years

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It has been revealed that 70 male patients have died from breast cancer in the Central American country of Costa Rica over the past five years.

Experts point out that the diagnosis and treatment for male patients are being delayed due to the stereotype that breast cancer is exclusively a women's disease.

According to foreign media reports and government statistics on October 19 (local time), among the 8,237 breast cancer deaths in Costa Rica from 2021 to 2025, men accounted for about 0.85%, or 70 people (an annual average of 14 people).

While women have a high rate of early detection at stages 0 to 1, men frequently get diagnosed late at advanced stages 2 to 4 because they leave symptoms unattended due to a lack of awareness about the disease, which lowers their survival rates.

Local medical staff emphasized, "Men can also get breast cancer, and not knowing this can lead to delayed diagnoses," adding, "If a lump is felt in the chest, you should seek medical attention even if there is no pain."

Experts point out that in the case of men, because the incidence of breast cancer is low and related knowledge is lacking, it is easy to mistake changes in the chest for other causes.

Signs to pay attention to include lumps, changes in the nipple, and skin deformation. Even if it is called "male breast cancer," the cancer cells are neither more nor less aggressive than "female breast cancer."

The treatment methods are also the same; surgical resection is prioritized, but chemotherapy and radiation therapy can be performed in parallel depending on the stage and cancer cell differentiation.

According to GLOBOCAN, a global cancer statistics agency, 2.43 million new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed across both men and women in the year 2024.

That year, deaths from breast cancer stood at 693,660, making breast cancer the 2nd most diagnosed cancer overall and the 4th leading cause of death.

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