What causes breast pain and itchy nipples?

The so-called mastitis is a purulent infection of breast tissue. Women are most likely to suffer from this disease during the postpartum period. And mastitis is often an important cause of fever in women after giving birth. There are many symptoms of mastitis, which may sometimes cause itchy nipples. If you want to preliminarily determine whether your nipples are itchy due to mastitis, you must understand the symptoms of mastitis.

Symptoms of mastitis: In the early stage of acute simple mastitis, the main symptoms are breast pain, local high skin temperature, tenderness, and the appearance of nodules with unclear boundaries and tenderness. In acute suppurative mastitis, the local skin becomes red, swollen, hot and painful, with obvious nodules and more tenderness. At the same time, the patient may experience chills, high fever, headache, weakness, rapid pulse and other general weakness. At this time, swollen lymph nodes may appear in the armpits, which are tender and the white blood cell count in blood tests may be elevated. In severe cases, sepsis may occur.

Abscess formation is caused by ineffective treatment measures or further aggravation of the disease, local tissue necrosis and liquefaction, and infection foci of varying sizes merge together to form an abscess. Abscesses may be unilocular or multilocular. Superficial abscesses are easy to detect, while deeper abscesses are less noticeable and difficult to detect. If mastitis patients have obvious systemic symptoms and local and systemic drug treatments are ineffective, it is important to puncture the painful area and wait for pus to be extracted or plate cells to be found in the smear to confirm the diagnosis of abscess.

Mastitis is a very common disease. In the early stages of the disease, the patient's nipples will feel tingling. If the patient is a breastfeeding woman, mastitis can easily lead to milk congestion and form lumps in the breasts. The breasts will be slightly swollen and painful, the breast skin will become slightly red, or the body may have a severe fever. There may also be chest tightness and headache, and the appetite will be significantly reduced. The patient's temper will become more irritable.