ABSTRACT
This paper was the culmination of many years’ work from the Cardiff group on the topic of benign breast disease, and attempted to bring an ordered framework to the confusing terminology and varied physiology of the condition known variously as ‘chronic mastitis’, ‘fibrocystic mastitis’, and ‘benign disease’. The paper sought to classify common but low-risk breast conditions as variants of normal physiology, rather than true breast disease leading to breast cancer. In so doing, it attempted to place common breast symptoms in a category of aberrant physiology, which could be treated in terms of quality of life, but also removed them from the high-risk category, thus giving reassurance to the patients.
