What causes breast milk overflow? Three aspects of analysis

Breast leakage refers to the discharge of yellow or light yellow liquid when women squeeze the nipple with their hands. This condition is called breast leakage. There are two types of breast leakage: true breast leakage and false breast leakage. True breast leakage means that liquid flows out of the mammary gland. This is a disease and the cause needs to be found out as soon as possible. False breast leakage means that the nipple is sunken and does not require treatment. There is usually a strong odor, which is mostly caused by excessive overflow of residues due to poor cleaning. Under normal circumstances, breast leakage only occurs in women during the lactation period. Once a woman has breast leakage during the non-lactation period, she should be alert to breast or systemic diseases. Breast leakage often occurs in women with breast tumors, breast hyperplasia or breast cancer. It is more common in women around 40 years old, and there is also a trend of younger age. Nipple leakage is just a symptom, which means that there are certain disease problems in the breast or body. If this symptom occurs, you should go to the hospital for a regular examination in time to find out the cause and treat it symptomatically.

Three aspects are the key to nipple discharge

(1) Caused by breast disease

The most common diseases that can cause nipple discharge include acute breast inflammation, mammary duct dilatation, breast proliferative diseases, intraductal papilloma and breast cancer. The nature of the discharge caused by different diseases is not the same. Nipple discharge caused by benign breast diseases is often light yellow, brown serous, and sometimes bloody; nipple discharge caused by malignant tumors is often dark red, bloody, dark gray or watery turbid. In addition, if there is unilateral bloody nipple discharge, the possibility of cancer is very high. Generally, the nipple discharge can be subjected to exfoliative cytology examination or breast ductoscopy to further clarify the diagnosis.

(2) Physiological

The mammary gland is the target organ of the endocrine glands. Under physiological conditions, the mammary duct epithelial cells are affected by endocrine hormones, especially estrogen and progesterone, which will produce physiological proliferation and physiological activities. A small amount of transparent or milky nipple discharge may occur, especially in young women whose endocrine hormones are relatively active, or for a period of time after women have weaned, because the levels of prolactin and certain hormones are still high, a small amount of milk secretion activity may still occur. This type of nipple discharge is often bilateral and usually flows out after squeezing. It rarely overflows spontaneously and is not accompanied by other symptoms. No treatment is required, but follow-up observation is required to distinguish it from pathological conditions. The influence of some hormones. The causes of non-breast diseases are mainly increased serum prolactin levels caused by various reasons, such as pituitary adenoma, stimulation of chest nerves (including chest wall injury, surgery, herpes zoster, etc.), endocrine gland lesions (including thyroid disease, ovarian or adrenal tumors, etc.).

(3) Caused by systemic diseases

Certain endocrine diseases, such as pituitary adenoma, can cause increased prolactin levels in the blood, causing secretory activity in the upper layer of the mammary ducts and resulting in nipple discharge. Sometimes patients taking certain drugs to treat hypertension or neuroleptics, as well as certain hormonal drug treatments, can also cause nipple discharge. This type of discharge is mostly bilateral and multi-ductal. During the examination, it can be found that the prolactin level is often high. A CT scan can rule out whether there is a pituitary tumor. If it is due to medication, the symptoms of discharge will gradually improve after stopping the medication.