Table 1. Breast Inflammatory Symptom Severity Index (BISSI) assessment items.

BISSI items	Scale	Inflammatory symptom
1. Pain*
a) Awareness	11-point NRS scale	Breast pain (on awareness)
b) Touch	11-point NRS scale	Breast pain (on touch)
2. Wellness/Sickness#
a) Fever	11-point NRS scale	Systemic symptoms
b) Generalised aches & pains	11-point NRS scale	Systemic symptoms
c) Headache	11-point NRS scale	Systemic symptoms
d) Sickness (unspecified)	11-point NRS scale	Systemic symptoms
3. Hardness/Tightness	5-point Likert scale	Breast swelling due to ICLB
4. Temperature of affected area	5-point Likert scale	Breast heat due to ICLB
5. Redness	5-point Likert scale	Breast redness due to ICLB
6. Affected Area	5-point Likert scale	Size of affected breast area
7. Impact	11-point NRS scale	Functional loss
Total score:
Awareness	Maximum of 80
Touch	Maximum of 80

Notes.

Note: In the BISSI there are seven questions, two of which have sub-questions*^#. In this paper we consider all sub-questions as an item. Thus, there were 11 items from seven questions of which one question* had two sub-questions and another question^# had four sub-questions. The remaining five were stand-alone questions.