Inflammatory Lesions of the Breast

Abstract

The breast can be the site of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. These diseases can be infectious in etiology (acute mastitis, breast abscess, and tuberculosis, among others), others are related to local changes in the nipple (subareolar abscess and duct ectasia), others have posttraumatic causes (fat necrosis), and there are inflammations related to hypersensitivity reaction (granulomatous mastitis) or even idiopathic. The clinical presentation of all of these entities is quite variable, and in many situations the diagnosis is clinical with immediate treatment (antibiotics in infectious cases), but otherwise, these lesions can cause tumorlike nodules that need to be sampled by fine-needle aspiration for definitive diagnosis. In this chapter the cytological aspects of the main inflammatory lesions that can affect the mammary gland are discussed.