Breast and Cervical Cancer Knowledge and Awareness among University Students

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> Breast and cervical cancers are the most common types of cancer in women worldwide. Previousstudies in Asia have shown that related knowledge and awareness is low among female university students. Thegoal of this study was to assess breast and cervical cancer knowledge, practices, and awareness among femaleuniversity students in Samsun,Turkey. Materials and <br/><b>Methods</b>: This research was a cross-sectional survey offemale university students using a self-administered. questionnaire to investigate participant awareness andknowledge of breast and cervical cancer. A total of 301 female university students participated. Descriptivestatistics and chi square tests were used for data analysis. <br/><b>Results</b>: The mean age of the participants in this studywas 22.0±5.91 years. Regarding family history, 89.7 % of the students had no known familial history of breastcancer. Students (65.4%) had knowledge about breast self examination and 52.2 % of them had performedbreast self examinationm while 55.1% of them had knowledge about prevention of cervical cancer. <br/><b>Conclusions</b>:Although the results are preliminary, the study points to an insufficient knowledge of university students inSamsun about breast and cervical cancer.