Factors Engaged With Women Performance in Doing Regular Breast Self-examination or Referring to Health Centers for Examination and Mammography

Aims: Breast cancer, as the most common cancer in women, will lead to death in case it is not diagnosed timely, and if the early diagnosis is timely, the chance of recovery will increase in the early stages. The aim of this study was to determine the factors engaged with women performance in doing regular breast self-examination or referring to health centers for examination and mammography.
In this descriptive-analytic cross sectional study, in 2012, 9260 women aged 20 to 65 years old in Isfahan province, Iran were selected from different districts by multistage cluster sampling method. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for data collection. The underlying variables, knowledge of risk factors, signs and symptoms, and beliefs about breast cancer diagnosis were considered as predictors of women performance. The data were analyzed by STATA 13 software, using Pearson correlation coefficient test, univariate, and multivariate logistic regression.
Findings: Generally, 55.7% of the patients had a poor knowledge of cancer risk factors. Knowledge about signs and symptoms of breast cancer was relatively good in 83.7% of the patients. Also, women belief in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment was poor. Knowledge of risk factors (OR=1.2), knowledge of signs and symptoms (OR=1.5), and beliefs (OR=1.3) were positive predictors of performance.
The underlying variables, knowledge of cancer risk factors, knowledge of signs and symptoms of breast cancer, and belief in the effectiveness of examination increase the women performance (self- examination or referring to health centers for examination) for breast cancer examination.