Painful lump in breast

A few words about breasts

The pain in the breast is not so rare thing to happen in the life of any young or elderly woman, especially considering the changes in the whole organism during the period of being pregnant and during the regular periods. Those changes may sometimes be manifested as the apparition of a lump and as the increased sensitivity to touch, for example.

Breasts are, however, very complex organs. They consist of several glands and the vessels whose function is to secrete the milk when it is needed. So, in the period of the adolescence, those vessels tend to become bigger due to the higher concentrations of the hormones, and that way they turn into the beneficial environment for the accumulation of fat. So, fortunately, not all the nodules or lumps are of the malign origin and rarely a lump grows into the breast cancer.

The lumps and the pain

Also, if the breasts are tender and painful, it isn’t, most commonly, the reason for being worried, because the majority of the female population suffers from the pain which is associated to the periods, and which is called cyclic mastalgia. At this point, it is god to mention that the pain may also come from the inflammation of the milk glands and passages, called mastitis. In this case, the warmth in the breast is also present, as well as the swelling of the affected area.

Nevertheless, the medical advice should be sought in the case of the lump and the pain when they appear together. This combination isn’t always so dangerous, and the good example is the case of the noncyclic mastalgia, which can be the result of the existence of a cyst or a fibrous formation.

The most common triggers of the pain are PMS (and generally the pain related to the periods), when there are the mentioned formations in the breasts, when the hormonal changes take place, if some infectious process starts and so on. The provokers of the pain may as well be the intake of some medications, such as dioxin, methyldopa, and similar; and the mechanical injury to the breast (e.g. surgical procedure).

When it comes to the most dangerous underlying disorder that can cause the pain, which is, of course, the malignant tumor of the breast, the examination will be done in order to exclude the possible fibrous cyst, which is of a benign origin. Additionally, those formations can be moved and they are soft.

However, it is important to know which women are more likely to be affected by the breast cancer, so that it could be spotted as soon as possible, which is the key of the successful treatment. That is, those are the females who have a genetic predisposition, who are elderly, the women who had the first menstruation very early or a very late menopause and those women who weren’t pregnant until the age of thirty.