Have you noticed that fluid is being released from your chest? Should I panic? Or maybe this is quite normal? A sign of what disease may be a discharge from the chest? All your questions can be correctly and professionally answered only by a mammologist, who you should definitely contact at the slightest discharge of fluid from the nipples and chest.
Discharge from the chest can have a completely different color: transparent, colostrum-like, cloudy, white, gray, greenish, yellow, brown, purulent, or even bloody. Fluid from the breast can appear both on its own and when it is squeezed. It can be of different consistencies: either thick, or completely liquid, or watery.
Discharge from the chest: possible causes
• The most famous and most common cause of discharge from the chest is ectasia - the expansion of the milk ducts. It begins with inflammation that arose in one duct, after which it is filled with secretions - sticky, thick, green or black. The process can then capture adjacent ducts. It happens that the removal of the affected duct is possible only surgically. The most affected by ectasia are women aged 40 to 50 years.
• Breast discharge may result from normal galactorrhea. From the mammary glands, colostrum, milk, and milk-like fluid are released. This happens with an increase in prolactin levels in the body or with other hormonal malfunctions in the woman’s body that appear when taking hormonal contraceptives, a pituitary tumor. Insufficient thyroid function can also cause galactorrhea.
• Fluid from the nipples may be the result of mastopathy, diseases of the appendages and uterus. In addition, breast discharge often occurs in women who have had miscarriages and abortions. As a rule, the body, which is already tuned in to the appearance of the baby and breastfeeding, does not have time to adapt to new conditions, as a result of which the liquid from the nipples appears, which soon disappears.
• There are other, more serious reasons for the discharge of fluid from the nipples: it may be an accumulation of pus in the chest, a closed injury to the breast, mastitis. In these serious diseases, the color of the fluid released can be from clear to yellow and even bloody. With a purulent process in the mammary gland, unambiguously surgical treatment is indicated (opening the abscess) with subsequent antibiotic therapy.
• The worst cause of breast discharge may be a benign or malignant tumor. A benign tumor is an intraductal papilloma. In order for it not to become malignant, surgical intervention with subsequent examination of the removed material is necessary. Discharges from the breast with benign tumors are most often bloody, with a thick consistency.
• A malignant tumor is breast cancer. It can be completely asymptomatic. You should "sound the alarm" if there are spontaneous bloody discharge from at least one breast with a simultaneous increase in the size of the mammary gland, as well as when nodules are detected.
• Paget's disease - a tumor in which the nipple is a disease. Signs of the disease: itching, burning in the nipple, darkening or reddening of the areola, the skin of the nipple and areola begins to peel off, the nipple may become deformed, and become drawn inward. Bloody discharge from the nipple is also possible. During treatment, the entire breast is usually removed, only sometimes the tumor is removed - within the limits of healthy tissues.
To find out the cause and diagnosis of the appearance of discharge, you should visit a mammologist who will send you for further breast examinations. Bloody discharge is considered the most terrible and unpleasant, so when they appear do not delay the visit to the doctor.