Nothing is impossible: radiation induced angiosarcoma of breast in a male patient

Abstract

Breast cancer in men is rare and only about 390 men in the UK are diagnosed with breast cancer each year with an incidence rate in the UK of 1.5 cases per 100 000 men. In addition, the increased use of radiotherapy for management of breast cancer has led to a reported increase of radiation induced angiosarcomas (RIAS) with an incidence of 0.05-0.3%. Here we report a unique and extremely rare case of RIAS of breast in a male patient. To our knowledge this is the only case in the literature of a radiation induced angiosarcoma of the breast in a male.

Figure 1:

Patient in upright position. Left chest wall reconstruction with pedicled latissimus dorsi flap in combination with a V-Y fashion adipocutaneous advancement flap from his abdomen after resection of RIAS of his breast.

Figure 2:

Patient in upright left lateral position. Rapidly developed wide spread disease over his left anterior and lateral chest wall not amenable to surgical treatment and electrochemotherapy. At this point chemotherapy treatment commenced with Paclitaxel.

Figure 3:

Patient in upright left lateral position. Significant control of his chest wall local disease progression with administration of full dose of Paclitaxel.