What Is Chronic Mastitis?
Chronic mastitis is one name given to a group of disorders. They have received many names at different times and in different countries of the world. It took a long time to sort out the reality of any differences within this broad grouping of diseases, but it was finally agreed in most quarters that the entity, chronic mastitis, is a single disease with multiple features of manifestation. Cases differ from each other with respect to the prominence and frequency of various signs. At a given time, some cases will prominently display one set of signs; other cases will prominently display others. And with the passage of time, a particular case may shift in the relative prominence of the various possible manifestations. The real issue, widely discussed and argued, was whether this disorder was really a benign tumor of the breast, or whether it was a chronic inflammatory disease. And if it was chronic inflammation, was it a prelude to malignancy? The various names under which this single dis