Women's Knowledge and Attitude Towards Breast Cancer Screening Tests

Breast cancer is one third of all the cancers in women and the second reason for death among them. Awareness of the screening methods and having regular diagnosis tests has an important role in declining the prevalence of invasive cancer types and inducing mortality. Thus, this study was carried out with the aim of assessing women’s knowledge and attitude towards breast cancer screening tests in Ardabil. In this descriptive and analytical study, 300 women referring to health centers and private clinics in Ardabil were selected with multiple sampling methods. Data were collected through the researcher‐made questionnaire including two parts: knowledge and attitude questions and information form. The scientific validity and reliability of the questionnaire were approved by content validity and the test‐re‐test method with two weeks distance respectively. For analyzing the data SPSS v14 and descriptive and inferential statistics tests were applied. 82% of women had the average awareness and 81.3% of them had high degree of awareness. There was a meaningful relationship between women’s awareness toward screening tests and their job and education (P<0.05). There was also a meaningful relationship between women's occupation, breast diseases history, breast cancer history in distant relatives and friends and first menstruation with performing screening tests (p<0.05). regarding the role of some factors and their effectiveness in performing screening tests and understanding the failure in applying disease preventing behavior, observing health care rules by the patients is very important. Authorities are demanded to provide free equipment in health centers at least for the advised cases, and provide the possibility of screening tests.