Talk about the top common questions about acute mastitis

  Inflammatory breast disease is a common condition that involves breast pain, surface redness, localized lumps, and even suppuration to form abscesses. Clinical breast inflammation can be divided into lactation inflammation and non-lactation inflammation.  The name lactation inflammation refers to the breast inflammation that occurs during lactation, which is often referred to as acute mastitis, mainly due to the accumulation of milk, nipple cracking and other reasons. The common symptoms are: breast swelling and pain, chills, fever, local redness, swelling, heat, pain, hard lumps to the touch, and elevated white blood cells. Most of them have a history of nipple injury, nipple cracking and breast accumulation. Their treatment in general hospitals is mostly with high doses of antibiotics. However, because of the breastfeeding period, it is often necessary to stop the infant from breastfeeding, otherwise the antibiotics will be absorbed by the infant through the milk. This can lead to the risk of antibiotic resistance in the infant and child later on. Once an abscess is formed, it is cut and drained, and the milk is returned, which not only causes greater pain to the patient, but also affects the infant’s breastfeeding.  In our Chinese medicine hospital, we use Chinese medicine to treat the abscesses by clearing heat and detoxifying, activating blood circulation and removing blood stasis, and dispersing nodules in the breast, together with local massage and external application of Chinese medicine ointment. The treatment effect is ensured while not affecting breastfeeding.