Orest Stakhiv, 66, never thought men could get breast cancer. When he first felt discomfort in his left areola a year and a half ago, he did not pay much attention to it.
He thought he had just rubbed his seat belt in the car because he had put his wallet in his breast pocket. This summer, Mr Orest’s daughter noticed that the left side of her father’s sternum was purple and that he had a growth. The family immediately turned to the specialists at St Panteleimon’s Hospital.
The diagnosis made by the doctors after an ultrasound and CT scan stunned Mr Orest – he was diagnosed with breast cancer. This disease is 100 times less common in men than in women.
Moreover, the tumour, which reached 8 centimetres, had already begun to disintegrate. There was no time for delay. The surgery had to be performed as soon as possible. A multidisciplinary team of mammologists, oncologists and reconstructive surgeons consulted on how to proceed. They decided to operate in two stages. First, oncologists had to do their part.
“We performed a mastectomy. That is, removal of the breast along with the tumour and part of the pectoral muscle. Next, I had a lymphadenectomy. This is the removal of the axillary lymph nodes, because it is through them that the disease spreads. It was imperative to do this to avoid a relapse,” says Yaroslav Vovchansky, oncological surgeon at St Panteleimon’s Hospital, about the first stage of the operation.
The second stage was performed by reconstructive surgeons.
“Our hospital has an oncoplastic approach to such patients. It is important for us not only to remove the tumour, but also to make the defect as aesthetically pleasing as possible. So we performed plastic surgery. We did it with a rotational flap – we closed the defect using the patient’s broadest back muscle,” says Hnat Gerich, head of the surgical department at St Panteleimon’s Hospital.
Both surgeries were successful. On the 10th day, Mr Orest went home. The man still has a long complex treatment ahead of him.
The doctors urge him to be more attentive to his health: to undergo regular check-ups, not to ignore changes in his health and to seek help in time.