<Renfrew, Woolridge and Ross McGill, in their invaluable book 'Enabling Women to Breastfeed' (2000) -- been discussed before on lactnet, a review of evidence, no one in the UK should be thinking of practicing without it, use the terminology, which I believe they may have taken from Mavis Gunther, a doc who was writing in the 50's, 'obstructive' and 'infectious' mastitis....> Thanks Magda. I agree "obstructive" and "infectious" is probably more accurate than "infectious" and "non-infectious". Obstructive mastitis may occur when part of the breast is not well-drained (eg tight clothes, baby not feeding well), and may be relieved by improved drainage, or may develop into infective mastitis if the milk can't be moved. I've just reread the mastitis section of the Renfew et al book to see if they come to any conclusion about definitions, but they don't really. And unfortunately their lit search ended in 1997, and we have some more publications on mastitis since then (eg Cathy Fetherston's work). Let's hope they get funding to keep updating their review. Lisa Amir, MBBS, MMed, IBCLC in Melbourne, Australia *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html