Roya Zare; Zahra Karimian; Nahid Zarifsanaiey
Abstract
Background: Breast Neoplasms is believed to be one of the most prevalent types of cancer in women. In the early stages, the disease could be diagnosed and controlled by breast self-examination (BSE). However, attitude barriers stop women to BSE on a number of occasions. We conducted the present study ...
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Background: Breast Neoplasms is believed to be one of the most prevalent types of cancer in women. In the early stages, the disease could be diagnosed and controlled by breast self-examination (BSE). However, attitude barriers stop women to BSE on a number of occasions. We conducted the present study to investigate the attitude barriers of breast self-examination from the perspective of women who referred to health centers affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS). Methods: The current research was conducted as a cross sectional method from August to September 2019 on women aged 20- 60 years referring to health centers affiliated to SUMS. The participants were selected with simple Random sampling and 101 complete questionnaires were returned. The data collection tool was the researcher-made questionnaire comprising 5 components (12 items) in Likert scales. The obtained data were analyzed with SPSS22 software using One sample T-test, Independednt T-test, and Pearson correlation. Results: Except for the component of mental beliefs (P=0.92), all the other components were significantly lower than expected (p <0.001). The mean scores were for embarrassment (2.85±0.48), previous knowledge (2.93±0.69), negligence (3.03±0.49), and fear of breast mass (3.05±0.43). Attitudinal barriers decreased with the increase in education (P=0.01). Moreover, regarding the evaluation of the correlation between the components, the highest correlation was between previous knowledge effect and negligence (r=0.66), embarrassment (r=0.52), fear of breath mass (0.50). Additionally, the correlation between negligence and fear of breast madd was found to be 0.52. Conclusion: Since certain factors, such as incorrect previous knowledge, examination-associated embarrassment, fear, and forgetfulness are barriers to BSE, designing educational programs at different ages and educational levels seems to be essential, for adolescents in particular. To eliminate previous misconceptions and attitudes, creating good culture through public media and social networks could be effective.
