Medical Treatment
Medical treatment has not proven consistently effective. Medical regimens have included tamoxifen, progesterone, bromocriptine, and testosterone. Surgical therapy includes reduction mammaplasty and mastectomy. However, breast reduction is not clinically indicated unless at least 4 pounds (1.8 kg) of tissue per breast needs to be removed. In the majority of cases of macromastia, surgery is medically unnecessary, depending on body height. Topical treatment includes regimens of ice to cool the breasts.
When hypertrophy occurs in adolescence, noninvasive treatments, including pharmaceutical treatment, hormone therapy, and steroid use are not usually recommended due to known and unknown side effects. Once a girl's breast growth rate has stabilized, breast reduction may be an appropriate choice. In some instances after aggressive or surgical treatment, the breast may continue to grow or re-grow, a complete mastectomy may be recommended as a last resort.
Pregnancy is recognized as the second most common reason for hypertrophy. When secondary to pregnancy, it may resolve itself without treatment after the pregnancy ends.
Read more about this topic: Hypertrophy Of Breast
Famous quotes containing the words medical and/or treatment:
“As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and that reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)