What does breast tenderness feel like?

Many female friends always hear their good friends of the same sex complain about breast pain, but they don’t know what the so-called breast pain feels like, or whether they have experienced breast pain but didn’t notice it. In fact, not every woman will experience breast pain. The main cause of breast pain is breast disease, such as breast hyperplasia, breast cancer, etc. The pain on both sides of the breast is unbearable, and redness and swelling will occur. Let me tell you what breast tenderness is.

There are many diseases that cause breast pain, the most common of which are acute mastitis, persistent pain, obvious tenderness, and pulsating pain after abscess formation. Breast hyperplasia, bilateral breast pain is mostly severe on one side, often cyclical, with breast swelling and pain before menstruation, and the pain relieves and disappears on its own after menstruation. In some patients, the pain may radiate to the armpits or shoulders and back. Plasma cell mastitis (also known as mammary duct ectasia syndrome) is often accompanied by local itching and burning pain. Nipple cracks and severe nipple pain during breastfeeding. A small number of breast cancers may cause mild dull pain or pain, and the attacks are often irregular; locally advanced breast cancer tumors rupture and necrotize to form ulcers, which may cause persistent burning pain; inflammatory breast cancer causes the breast skin to become red, swollen, hot, painful, and accompanied by tenderness.

When identifying breast pain, the breast clinic doctor will ask about the medical history, understand whether there are any triggers, the onset and duration, the characteristics of the pain, whether treatment has been given and what the results were, and then conduct a physical examination. In differential diagnosis, imaging examinations are sometimes needed, including mammography (breast molybdenum target photography), color Doppler ultrasound, and breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). If breast pain is accompanied by nipple discharge, some examination methods for nipple discharge can also be carried out, such as breast ductoscopy, breast duct angiography, nipple discharge cytology examination, etc.