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Reply to Wilms tumor and breast cancer
Author(s) -
Dean Jennifer B.,
Dome Jeffrey S.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/cncr.29281
Subject(s) - medicine , breast cancer , cancer , population , radiation therapy , epidemiology of cancer , epidemiology , survivorship curve , wilms' tumor , oncology , incidence (geometry) , gynecology , physics , environmental health , optics
arrive at an expected number of male breast cancer cases of 0.1. Using Poisson statistics, the corresponding probability of observing 1 cases of male breast cancer was also only 0.1. In fact, no cases were observed. Thus, the answer to the question of whether men as well as women had an increased risk of breast cancer after Wilms tumor and radiotherapy in our study is no. Had we restricted the calculation above to patients receiving chest radiotherapy, assuming that the 30-fold increase we observed for females also held for males, we would have expected only 0.0031 multiplied by 22, for a total of 0.07 cases. More accurately, however, the study was simply uninformative with regard to male breast cancer. We believe it is likely that chest irradiation for Wilms tumor increases the risk of subsequent breast cancer in men, just as it does in women. However, a much larger population of survivors of Wilms tumor, and/or follow-up through the advanced ages at which male breast cancer is more frequent, would be needed to prove the point.