The experience of a sample of Canadian men with breast cancer
Bibliographic record
Abstract
10549 Background: Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy among North American women, accounting for about 30% of all new cases each year. Although male breast cancer accounts for less than 1% of all breast cancer cases, recent reports indicate significantly increasing incidence. Research suggests that men diagnosed with breast cancer experience serious psychologic issues including feeling less masculine by having a woman’s disease, feeling isolated with a rare malignancy and feeling uncomfortable seeking or receiving support. Men may also experience post-surgical effects including changed appearance of the male chest and decreased arm strength. There have been numerous large-scale studies examining womens’ experiences with breast cancer. To date, there have been no North American studies examining what a man experiences with a breast cancer diagnosis. The objective of this qualitative study was to determine the experiences of a sample of Canadian men diagnosed with breast cancer. Methods: After ethics approval, an invitation letter and consent form were mailed to those individuals listed as “male”, “breast cancer”, and “alive”, in the Alberta Cancer Registry. 20 men responded indicating their interest. After written consent, audiotaped interviews were conducted. As little is known about a man’s experience with breast cancer, an exploratory qualitative methodology was utilized. Results: We found a great variability among the participants with respect to whom they disclosed their diagnosis, how they viewed their masculinity after a breast cancer diagnosis and their views on life after a cancer experience. All participants stated that there was a major lack of awareness about male breast cancer, both in the public and health professional domain. All participants identified a lack of written information specific for men with breast cancer. All participants denied interest in traditional “support” groups, but would have welcomed the opportunity to speak with a man who had gone through similar diagnosis and treatment. Conclusions: Needs identified by the respondents include increased medical and public awareness of male breast cancer as well as specific written information. Further research is necessary to identify supports and resources helpful for male patients. No significant financial relationships to disclose.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.021 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".