mastitis
Meaning of mastitis: Mastitis is breast tissue inflammation most common during breastfeeding, though its symptoms can occasionally overlap with those of a rare inflammatory breast cancer.
Definition of mastitis
Mastitis is a condition in which breast tissue becomes inflamed, most often occurring in breastfeeding mothers when a blocked milk duct leads to inflammation, which can then become infected, typically with bacteria present on the skin. Symptoms commonly include breast pain, redness, warmth, and swelling, sometimes accompanied by fever and a general feeling of illness.
Mastitis can occur less commonly outside of breastfeeding as well, including a form associated with smoking that affects the ducts beneath the nipple. Most cases resolve with appropriate care directed at both the blocked duct and any accompanying infection.
Because the redness, warmth, and swelling seen in mastitis can resemble the appearance of inflammatory breast cancer, an uncommon but aggressive form of breast cancer that does not respond to antibiotics, symptoms that fail to improve with standard treatment for mastitis are generally considered to warrant further evaluation to rule out this alternative explanation.
How mastitis is built
- mamm/o, mast/o Combining form · Latin and Greek breast
- -itis Suffix · Greek inflammation
A medical term is read from its ending backwards: the suffix first, then the prefix, then the root. See all 223 word parts.
Used in a sentence
The patient was diagnosed with mastitis after developing breast pain, redness, and fever while breastfeeding.
Good to know
Inflammatory breast cancer can closely resemble mastitis in appearance, so breast inflammation that does not improve with standard treatment for mastitis raises the need for further evaluation to exclude this rarer cause.