What is granulomatous mastitis?

Many people may not have heard of or understand granulomatous mastitis. This disease is relatively common in clinical practice. There are obvious differences between granulomatous mastitis and mastitis, but both are manifestations of breast inflammation. We still need to understand what granulomatous mastitis is specifically.

1. Granulomatous mastitis is a type of chronic breast inflammation with granuloma as the main pathological feature. It includes multiple clinical diseases, one of which is more common and has unknown cause. The granulomatous inflammation is centered on the mammary lobules, so it is called granulomatous lobular mastitis.

2. Breast granuloma or granulomatous lobularitis refers to granulomatous lesions of the breast with non-caseous necrosis limited to the lobules. No pathogen can be found and it may be an autoimmune disease. Like granulomatous thyroiditis and granulomatous orchitis, it is easily confused with tuberculous mastitis. The incidence rate was not high in the past, so clinical and pathological doctors did not observe and study it much.

3. The main manifestations are: breast lumps, pain, hard texture, irregular shape, unclear boundaries with normal tissue, and enlarged lymph nodes in the axillary on the same side. The onset is sudden or the lump suddenly increases in size. After a few days, the skin turns red and forms small abscesses. There is not much pus after the abscesses break, and the abscesses do not heal for a long time, with redness, swelling and ulceration occurring one after another. The initial lump stage is very similar to breast cancer, which can easily lead to misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. If someone rashly undergoes radical mastectomy, the breast cancer should be frozen on the table or patiently wait for the results of paraffin sectioning. This disease must also be differentiated from breast tuberculosis, breast fat necrosis, etc. When there is redness, swelling, and suppuration, it may be misdiagnosed as plasma cell mastitis, duct ectasia, breast tuberculosis, or a general bacterial abscess, with incorrect incision and drainage.