Breast Health Enterprise

The current domestic breast health companies are essentially composite service entities that span the three major scenarios of consumer care, clinical assistance, and postoperative rehabilitation—neither the “IQ tax-hit area” in some people’s stereotypes, nor the “universal solution to breast problems” that can replace clinical diagnosis and treatment. The core value is to fill the full-cycle health gap that cannot be covered by breast department services in public hospitals.

Last month, I accompanied my best friend who had just undergone a total breast cancer surgery for a review. The attending doctor at a tertiary hospital only said two words after watching the film: I am recovering well. I will wear a compression bra when I go home and come back for a review in six months. But she had just had her stitches removed, and the edema in her chest made it painful even to lift her arms. The compression bras she searched online were either too tight or not supportive enough. A patient in the same ward recommended the Breast Health Management Center, which has been open for four years downstairs in the hospital. The nurse measured her for fifteen minutes with a soft ruler, adjusted the custom-made compression bra for her, and taught her a set of lymphatic massage techniques that do not involve pulling on the wound. When she went for a review last month, her edema disappeared nearly twice as fast as that of patients who had undergone surgery at the same time.

To be honest, I had a very bad impression of this industry in the past two years. I read news about several middle-aged and elderly women who spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy "knot-removing essential oil" and ended up in the hospital due to allergies. I always felt that such stores relied on fraud to make money. Only after I really got in touch did I find that the industry is now divided into two groups, and no one can convince anyone: One group is the "medical extension group", which is basically an organization that cooperates with the breast department of public hospitals and maternal and child health hospitals. The nurses they recruit must either have a practicing nurse certificate or a professional with a breast health management certificate, and they are determined not to do things like "breast enlargement massage" and "essential oil dissipation". Projects suspected of being medical propaganda only provide content that is clearly an extension of medical services, such as postoperative rehabilitation guidance, clinical follow-up, and customization of pressure garments. Their views are sharp: the red line of breast health companies is that they must not touch diagnosis and treatment. Anyone who dares to say that they can "cure" is a liar. The existence of this industry is to help hospitals divert needs that do not occupy outpatient resources.

The other group is the "daily consumption group". Most of them are opened in business districts and communities. They provide non-medical services such as underwear fitting during adolescence, breast feeding, menstrual pain relief, and daily breast screening. I know an owner of a community breast care store who has been running a community breast care store for 8 years. She used to be a nurse at a maternal and child health hospital. She clearly posted "No diagnosis" on the wall of her store. Last week, a mother brought her daughter who was just a freshman in high school to choose orthopedic bras. The child was growing early and it hurt to wear ordinary sports bras. She couldn’t help but pull her clothes during class, and she was too embarrassed to go to the hospital to ask. She chose customized developmental bras here. Before she left, the little girl said that she could finally sit in a class properly. The views of practitioners of this school are also very practical: 80% of women's breast discomfort is caused by lifestyle habits and menstrual cycles. It is not enough to go to the hospital to register. We can't let girls cry when their breasts are engorged or they panic when they wear underwear in adolescence, right?

Of course, controversies have never stopped. The most common complaints are "inflated fees and excessive IQ taxes". This is indeed not groundless: when supervision was lax a few years ago, there were small organizations that packaged ordinary essential oils that cost dozens of yuan as "imported" "Essence-Removing Oil" sells for thousands of dollars, and some nurses are on the job within just three days of training, and they are even sending mothers to the hospital for massaging their breasts. Even now, there are still many stores cutting leeks under the guise of "breast enlargement." Consumers who have been through the trap will naturally be biased against the entire industry. But you can’t overwhelm everyone with one stroke: Breast removal services from professional institutions cost RMB 300 to 300 per time, which is much more cost-effective than trying to cure mastitis at home; customized post-operative pressure bras are several hundred yuan more expensive than the one-size-fits-all models sold in hospitals, but after three months of wearing them, the pain of wound traction can be reduced by more than half. These real values ​​really cannot be counted as IQ taxes.

Data released by the China Anti-Cancer Association last year mentioned that the incidence of breast disease in women in my country has increased by 3.4% every year, but 80% of urban women have never received professional daily breast care guidance. Doctors in the breast department of tertiary hospitals have to answer 70 to 80 calls a day on average. They have no time to answer such trivial questions as "Does it matter if there is swelling and pain before menstruation?" and "How to choose underwear during lactation." This is exactly the soil for the existence of breast health companies.

Now the entire industry is still in a period of reshuffling, and there are no completely unified standards. Ordinary consumers don’t have to worry too much when choosing: as long as they boast of “can cure nodules” or “massage breast enlargement” at the beginning, just turn away; those who dare to clearly state the boundaries of their services and proactively say “go to the hospital for examination first if there is any abnormality” are basically reliable. After all, for most ordinary women, breast problems are never just a matter of "sickness and surgery". The embarrassment of adolescence, the pain of breastfeeding, and the inexplicable pain of menopause. These small problems that seem "not qualified to go to the hospital" are precisely the most annoying. If there is a reliable institution that can handle these needs, it is actually a good thing.