Publication:

Awareness about risk factors for breast cancer and mammography among pregnant women

Background Breast cancer is a commonest cancer among females. Places that have experienced low prevalence are also affected recently due to failure at early detection. Increased level of awareness translates into early detection of the disease and early presentation. Improving awareness about the disease and availability of screening practices through targeted interventions will positively influenced adoption of early detection methods by women. We planned a study to determine the awareness about risk factors for breast cancer and mammography among pregnant mothers.

Methods Cross-sectional survey of 400 pregnant women from May 2016 to August 2016, at Indira Gandhi medical college and research institute, Puducherry in India. Face to face interview was conducted with all participants by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained a total of 21 questions. Answers to all questions were collected as categorical responses ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Each answer was given a score of 1 and 0 respectively. Chi-square test was used to assess significance of study findings.

Results A cohort of 400 pregnant women, and all completed the questionnaire by a face to face interview. Response rate was 100%. Mean age was 24±3.72 years. The mean knowledge score on awareness about breast cancer was 0.56 and the mean knowledge score on awareness about risk factors for breast cancer was 0.14. Only 31 pregnant women (7.75%) were aware about mammography. All socio-demographic variables had significant effect on knowledge with p-value <0.05.

Conclusions The knowledge of our pregnant women on awareness about breast cancer was average and that on breast cancer risk factors and mammography was very poor.