Management of Mastitis in the Hospital Setting: An International Audit Study.
Lisa H Amir, Kelly P Coca, Marcia Juliana Mello Da Silva and 12 others
PMID 40437779WHAT IT FOUND
Hospital emergency care for mastitis varied widely: most women received antibiotics, breast abscesses were aspirated in Australia but often drained surgically elsewhere, and breastfeeding advice was frequently undocumented.
Key findings
01Antibiotic therapy was recorded for most presentations, and the most commonly prescribed antibiotic varied by country.
02Breast abscess management varied: ultrasound-guided aspiration was common in Australia, while incision and drainage was standard in Germany and common in Brazil.
03Advice to continue breastfeeding was often not recorded in the medical records.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was a retrospective audit of routine clinical records, so it describes what was documented rather than what happened in the community or what patients experienced. Data were collected from different sites over different periods, and the analysis did not plan statistical comparisons between countries. Important information was missing, including duration of symptoms in 8% to 46% of records and breastfeeding advice in many records. Each site may not represent mastitis care in its wider community or country. Patients reached emergency departments through different local pathways, so differences between sites may reflect referral patterns rather than true differences in disease or care. The audit cannot show whether antibiotics, drainage methods, or breastfeeding advice improved outcomes.
Declared interests
No funding was received, and the authors declared no conflicts of interest. One author received a CNPq productivity scholarship.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat the high antibiotic rate as evidence that antibiotics are needed for most mastitis cases. This audit only describes recorded emergency department care, and it did not test whether antibiotics, aspiration, or incision and drainage improved outcomes.