New research is overturning 160-year-old assumptions about breast anatomy, an expert has told a conference in Dublin. The findings can help inform women who are breastfeeding or undergoing breast surgery.
Our knowledge of human breast gland anatomy has advanced little since the 1840s, Dr Donna Geddes from the University of Western Australia told delegates at last Saturday's conference on new perspectives in breastfeeding.
But Dr Geddes recently used non-invasive ultrasound to monitor breast anatomy and milk flow in breastfeeding volunteers in Perth, and found that the tissue was more complex than expected.
"We started to see quite different things to the texts," said Dr Geddes, describing how one of her studies found that ducts in the gland are not as plentiful as previously assumed. This could affect women undergoing breast surgery who later want to breastfeed, she noted.
"Surgeons need to take into consideration that there isn't as much redundancy in the gland as thought before," she told The Irish Times.
"They need to be aware, and also completely inform the patient, of the statistics for breast surgery, that partial breastfeeding may be possible but fully breastfeeding may not be."
Dr Geddes also found that individual women can have markedly different gland anatomies and milk flow, which can affect how long their babies needed to feed at each sitting.
This suggests that mothers of healthy babies should not place too much emphasis on timing feeds, she noted. "We need to encourage mothers to be confident in reading their baby, watching their cues instead of the clock," Dr Geddes said
She added that research into breast anatomy needs to continue, and will benefit breastfeeding mothers, particularly if they have concerns.
"For any organ in the body if you have a problem you go to the doctor, you have a test, you go to a specialist.
"But if you have a breastfeeding problem you go to a doctor and they usually know very little about it and that's because we don't have the knowledge of anatomy and they are very limited in the treatment because of that," she said.
"We need to do the research to identify what is normal. The breast is highly complex and we need to know those complexities to assist people," Dr Geddes added.
