Prevalence Of Breast Cancer And its Association with Local Beliefs of Women For Mammography In Rawalpindi Pakistan

Abstract

Objective: To observe the prevalence of breast cancer and age at which women undergo/report for mammography. The other objective was to find out the relation between breast cancer and beliefs of women.

Study design: It was a cross-sectional study design.

Place and duration of study: The study was conducted at Ibn’e Sena Laboratory & Diagnostic Centre from May to June 2022.

Material and Methods: By adopting cross-sectional study design opinions of 170 women who were coming for mammography were interpreted through a questionnaire.

Results: About 62% of the participants had mammography because they were fearful of developing cancer.95% of them had mammography on physicians prescription while only 9.4% had mammography due to personal belief and 5.9% had mammography on advice of male partner.48.8% agreed that it is burdensome to have mammography one or two times a year.28.8% didn’t realize how to perform BSE. Breast cancer was found positive in 48.8% of the participants. Positive relation between beliefs and breast cancer was found through chi-square test.

Conclusion: We concluded that women have negative beliefs about mammography which lead to the increased prevalence of breast cancer. Finance is a barrier in breast cancer detection. So more facilities are required which canovercome the financial barriers in detection. Also more awareness programs should be launched.