Bacterial infections in patients with nipple piercings: a qualitative systematic review of case reports and case series

A rapid review of physical health risks associated with special procedures (tattooing, body piercing, acupuncture, electrolysis)

“…The research was conducted across 31 different countries with just under a third of the studies being conducted in the USA (50 studies) and only six in the UK. Two SRs focused on oral piercing (Hennequin-Hoenderdos et al 2016, Passos et al 2022), one on nipple piercing (Acuña-Chavez et al 2022) and one on piercing in general (Sindoni et al 2022). Across all the SRs, there were 213 puncture (piercing) sites, which included the ear (22 studies), nipple (28 studies), tongue (68 studies), lip (44 studies), tongue and lip (nine studies), oral (15 studies), nose (one study), genital (one study) and navel (one study).…”

“…Across the four SRs (Acuña-Chavez et al 2022; Hennequin-Hoenderdos et al 2016; Passos et al 2022, Sindoni et al 2022), the clinical presentations commonly reported after having undergone body piercing varied according to the site of the piercing. Specifically, those who had nipple piercings described breast fluid collection, breast pain or tenderness, breast swelling, deformity and discharge, as well as similar presentations to those having a piercing in other parts of the body, including erythema, fever, headache, hyperpigmentation, oedema, productive cough with bloody sputum, pruritus, swollen glands and syncope (see Table 1).…”

“…It was therefore deemed to be high quality. Two scored nine out of 11 (Acuña-Chavez et al 2022, Sindoni et al 2022). Neither had any flaws considered critical for the purposes of the present review, but they had non-critical weaknesses, such as the lack of assessment of the likelihood of publication bias, so they were considered to be of moderate quality.…”

“…Evidence from four SRs (Acuña-Chavez et al 2022 – moderate quality; Hennequin-Hoenderdos et al 2016 – low quality; Passos et al 2022 – high quality, Sindoni et al 2022 – moderate quality) described a wide range of complications and adverse reactions experienced by individuals who had undergone body piercing. These were classified as microbiological complications (fungal, viral and bacterial infections) and non-microbiological complications (allergic reactions, malignant growths, benign growths, and other skin adverse reactions).…”

“…The searches identified four SRs (Acuña-Chavez et al 2022, Hennequin-Hoenderdos et al 2016, Passos et al 2022, Sindoni et al 2022) that included 174 studies published between 1973 and 2020 focusing on body piercing (see Table 13). There was a moderate overlap across the SRs, meaning that 30 primary studies were included in more than one SR. More details about overlap can be found in Section 5.6.…”