Thermal Sensory Analysis of Cervical and Thoracic Temperature Sensibility in Female with Breast Pain

Abstract

In order to distinguish the grades of breast pain with a quantitative index, the detection and pain thresholds were measured with the technique of TSA (Thermal Sensory Analysis) on patients with breast pain. We aimed to explore whether TSA could be used to predicate the degree of breast pain as an objective indicator or not. Thirtytwo female outpatients with breast pain were included in the study by inclusion criteria. A total of sixtyfour breasts were measured. The cold pain threshold (CPT), cold detection threshold (CDT), warm detection threshold (WDT) and heat pain threshold (HPT) were measured at the following five points of both sides: neck, shoulder, axilla, back and super ior lateral quadrant of breast. The sixtyfour breasts were devided into three groups: Group A consisted of 29 breasts that have breast pain grade from 0 to 1 (No pain at that time); Group B consisted of 20 breasts that have breast pain grade from 2 to 4 (Pain exist, but participant can’t give it an explicit score); Group C consisted of 15 breasts that have breast pain grade from 5 to 7. Statistic analysis was performed by SPSS 20.0 to compare the means and SD. Variance for each threshold at each site was expressed as Coefficient of Variation percentage (CV%), using the standard deviation (SD) divided by the meanx100. On every sites, group B has the highest value of WDT and HPT. And expect the site of axilla, group C has higher values than group A of WDT and HPT. On the site of breast, the values of CPT and CDT have the trend to increase from group A to group C. But the differences in groups were without statistically significant differences (p>0.2). The CV% of HPT and WDT are lowest and near to each other, and CPT has the highest value of CV%. Breast pain can not only reduce the sensibility of warm detection and heat pain of breast, but also the sites close to breast. Oppositely, breast pain can enhance the sensibility of cold detection and cold pain of breast. But C PT has the highest value of CV%, this may means CPT has poor reliability due to wide variance.