Hi everyone, I have enjoyed reading your comments defending the diagnosis of thrush in the ducts. My suggestion that Thrush is not necessarily the cause of shooting breast pain comes from a suggestion made to me by a colleague in Australia at the ALCA conference. I had always accepted that thrush was the major cause of this type of breast pain. Since then I have made closer observations.Here is one brief case history. One of my mums presented with shooting breast pain, fussy feeding and black stools in the baby. The baby definitely had thrush in the mouth and mother had cracked nipples. So we treated the thrush and everything came right. A month later the mother rang me saying she had the EXACT SAME BREAST PAIN, did it mean she again had thrush in the breast? She has been very particular about cleanliness and diet and has not been on antibiotics.She has never had vaginal thrush. There was no sign of thrush in the baby or on the nipples so I observed a feed. This confirmed that the baby did not have enough breast in her mouth, the nipple was ridged and turned white on the end, 5 minutes after the feed. The breastpain disappeared immediately the positioning was adjusted. Maybe thrush does get into the ducts, but maybe not as often as we think. Robyn Dunning