Hello, med students. My name is Zach Olson, and thank you for downloading this week's

episode of the EM Clerkship Podcast. This week, we are talking about breast disorders. These are

pretty straightforward ED management cases, once you kind of think through this a few times.

Today, we're first going to quickly talk about the history and exam that you're attending is

going to want from you when a patient comes in with a breast complaint.

And then after that, we're going to go through the four common breast complaint categories inflamed irritated breasts

non-inflamed breast pain breast mass and nipple discharge and before we get rolling here

with all of these the patient is going to need follow upup, ideally with a breast surgeon, if one is available

in your community. And the reason is, with any of these chief complaint categories, they are all

breast cancer until proven otherwise. Say it with me. These are all breast cancer until proven otherwise. Usually none of them are

actually that dangerous unless they represent breast cancer. With all of these, you are concerned for

breast cancer. Breast cancer is the life threat this week, so you're going to follow these

patients up very closely for further

imaging and that type of thing. Even if the ED management itself is pretty limited, all of these

complaints are breast cancer until proven otherwise. And so let's get started with this. First,

let's talk history and exam.

Besides the obvious stuff, there are three other questions

that you specifically want to put in your presentation.

Keeping in mind that your big concern is breast cancer.

So you want to ask about family history

of breast cancer, first degree relatives especially. You want to ask about delay in childbearing

until after the age of 30, or I suppose no childbearing, another big breast cancer risk factor.

...