Effect of individual counseling on pain quality in the women with cyclic mastalgia: a clinical trial

Background: Despite the high prevalence of cyclic mastalgia and disagreement about its therapeutic methods, there is a lot of ambiguity about breast pain yet. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the effect of individual counseling on the quality of pain in the women with cyclic mastalgia. Methods: This randomized-controlled trial study was conducted in 2017 on eighty eligible women with cyclic mastalgia that had referred to Health Centers in Karaj, Iran. The subjects were randomly assigned to two groups; intervention and control. Four individual counseling sessions were held for intervention group. With a special visual analog scale for pain and Cardiff's breast pain chart, cyclic mastalgia was diagnosed. Pain was assessed before and after consultation with McGill pain quality questionnaire. T-test and ANCOVA were used to examine the means of pain quality before and after the intervention. Findings: Demographic results including, marital status, educational level, occupation, spouse's education and the husband's job were not significant. Also, the history of lactation, surgery, breast sampling, benign breast disease, nipple discharge and breast injury were no significant between two groups as the chi-square test. But, after the intervention, the McGill mean score test in all of pain dimensions showed a significant difference between two groups (P= 0.001). Conclusion: This study showed that counseling can lead improvement of pain quality indices in affecting women. As the result, counseling can be suggested as a suitable treatment for mild to moderate pain.