NYU Langone’s research study, which found that men at high risk of developing breast cancer can benefit from mammograms, prompted a woman to share her husband’s story of breast cancer diagnosis.
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In a recent study in the journal Radiology, researchers at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center found that men at high risk of developing breast cancer stand to benefit from mammography screening for the disease.
“A lot of male survivors of breast cancer will develop a second cancer later in life, and if we can just detect them earlier, it can really improve their outcomes,” lead study author Yiming Gao, MD, a diagnostic radiologist at Perlmutter Cancer Center, recently told CNN.
CNN reported on the research, which was the largest review to date in the United States of men who have had the screening procedure.
Seeing the study in the news, spurred a woman named Harris Murray to reach out to Dr. Gao and co-lead author Samantha L. Heller, MD, PhD, both assistant professors in the Department of Radiology.
Frederick Thurston Murray was 37 when his internist dismissed troubling symptoms, telling him “men don’t get breast cancer,” his wife, Harris Murray, recalls.
Mr. Murray took it upon himself to get a mammogram, and after he was diagnosed with breast cancer, his doctor performed a modified radical mastectomy and recommended radiation therapy.
Mr. Murray spent the ensuing decades devoting himself to raising awareness before he died of other causes. “I was always extremely proud of the way Thurston handled his cancer diagnosis, his treatment, and his life after cancer,” Mrs. Murray says. “My October ribbon is pink and blue! It is a way for me to continue educating people about the fact that breast cancer is a human disease, not a ‘woman’s disease.’”
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