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Breast Skin Changes

History
1. Nipple Scaling
2. Nipple Retraction
3. Redness or Warmth
4. Skin thickening
5. Dimpling
6. Duration
7. Location
8. Changes
Normal Variation
1. Montgomery glands
  1. Prominent and visible as bumps around areola
2. Nipple Inversion
  1. Congenitally present
  2. Differentiate from Nipple retraction
Infections
1. Intertrigo
  1. Commonly occurs in folds of pendulous breasts
Abnormal Findings (Red Flags)
1. Nipple retraction
  1. Cancer until proven otherwise!
  2. Suggests retroareolar mass
2. Paget's Disease of the Nipple
3. Skin Retraction
4. Skin Dimpling
5. Peau d'orange
  1. Breast skin dotted like skin of an orange
    1. Not orange color
  2. Very ominous sign
    1. Suggests lymph node involvement
6. Breast Erythema in non-lactating women
  1. Ominous if persistent Mastitis greater than 2 weeks
  2. Suggests inflammatory carcinoma

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This page was written by Scott Moses, MD. This page was last revised before 5/10/08, prior to consistent tracking of revision date. This page was last published on 6/1/2008. Please send comments and questions to the editor. Contact information may be found on the page About the Family Practice Notebook. These pages are best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0.