[Large breasts--big problems?].

Hypertrophy of the breast often leads to pain in the neck and shoulders. This group of patients comprises mainly employed women who are otherwise in good health. For many of them, the problems cause long periods of absence from work. We wished to find out to what degree the main symptoms of these patients were caused by large and heavy mammae. We also wished to ascertain whether operative reduction of the breasts has the desired effect of alleviating the problems. A questionnaire was sent to 99 patients. The response was 69%. We discuss the interpretation of the answers, and conclude that the problems reported by patients were to a large extent real and that the vast majority of patients had been helped by operation.