DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2016.v04i08.039

Pages: 2924-2928

Breast cancer is an important health problem in India and it is easily preventable by early detection methods. Still there is high level of mortality due to lack of awareness among women regarding the early detection and screening for breast cancer. The purpose of the study is to assess the knowledge of Breast self-examination, its practice and health seeking behavior of breast cancer. It was a community based descriptive cross-sectional study done in the field practice area of SLIMS, Pondicherry. A pre-designed, structured questionnaire was used to collect the data by a house to house interview method. Information was collected regarding their socio economic status, awareness of breast cancer, breast self-examination, its practice and attitude towards breast cancer. Among 258, who were interviewed most of them (251) 97.2% were aware of breast cancer. Only (104) 40.3% were aware of breast self-examination and (88) 34.1% of them said BSE is not necessary for them at all. It was observed 17.8% (46) have performed BSE before. Regarding the age group for performing BSE was 29.5% in 20-40 years, 28.7% after 40 years and 24.5% said that they do not know when it should be done. It was reported, among the participants only 17.8% (46) has done BSE and 85.7% were interested to know about BSE and only 7.4% knew the correct method of performing BSE. The reason for doing BSE among these 17.8% was 9.3% due to pain in the breast and 7.4% for lump in the breast. 46.1% of the participants agreed that early diagnosis of breast cancer by doing BSE will definitely cure Breast cancer.