The prevalence of breast variations among women of reproductive age in an Iranian community

Background: Breast variations play an important role in breastfeeding success. It seems that this issue has not gained enough attention. The present study was designed to measure the prevalence of breast variations among women of reproductive age in an Iranian community. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, a sample of 402 pregnant women who were referred to the only maternal hospital of Rafsanjan county, Iran, was randomly recruited for the study. There were 20 items on the checklist in two sections including 14 demographic and 6 specific items. Trained physicians recorded the data in the checklist through interviewing the mothers and using their physical examination after receiving respondents’ consent. Data were analyzed using SPSS software. In addition to descriptive methods, the level of risk of breastfeeding failure with 95% CI was calculated. Normally distributed continuous variables were compared using the independent t-test and the Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare discrete variables and those continuous variables that were not normally distributed. Results: Of 402 mothers who accepted to participate, 51 mothers were detected with at least one type of breast variation giving a prevalence of 127 per 1000 mothers. The most common type of breast variation was “flat nipple” (n = 34). The existence of at least one type of breast variation among mothers increased the risk of failure in the breastfeeding process 14.1 times. Having “flat nipple” increased the risk of breastfeeding failure 11.6 times. Conclusions: In addition to the high prevalence of breast variation among the study population, our findings illustrated its significant negative effect on breastfeeding success. Thus, health professionals’ skills must be developed in the management of breastfeeding among mothers with this problem and mothers need to be given appropriate advice on how to counteract resulted breastfeeding difficulties. More investigations are strongly recommended.