Early Detection for Breast Cancer in Iran

Abstract

<br/><b>Objectives</b>: The present study was carried out to assess knowledge, attitudes and practice (KAP) concerningearly detection for breast cancer among Iranian health care providers (HCP). <br/><b>Methods</b>: Three hundred andeighteen HCPs were selected with stratified simple random sampling and given questionnaires to determinetheir baseline KAP for breast cancer early detection. Results were compared among categories of age, educationallevel, marriage status and professional experience with the Chi square test. <br/><b>Results</b>: For six knowledge questions,71.8% participants had four or more correct responses, 80.5% agreed completely with ‘women will accept thescreening program if the physicians advise it’. However, 48% of female HCPs did not carry out any method ofbreast cancer screening for themselves during the last year; 81.5% did not carry out breast examinations for themajority of female outpatients and inpatients during last year; only 5.1% recommended breast self examination(BSE) to more than 70% of their female patients. <br/><b>Conclusions</b>: Knowledge and attitudes are relativelyappropriate, but practical measures are not enough. Considering the HCP’s role for implementing the nationalbreast cancer control program, improvement in knowledge and attitudes is still important, but this may not beenough to reach to an appropriate level of desired practice.