Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Cancer is the greatest cause of mortality in the world; Breast cancer claimed the lives of 2.26 million worldwide.
OBJECTIVE:
To determine the reasons for reluctance to examine the mammogram among women attending early detection clinics for breast cancer in the city of Mosul / Iraq
METHOD:
A cross-sectional study was carried out between January 2018 and December 2020. It was carried out in early detection clinics in Mosul's two major hospitals. Females who were diagnosed as breast cancer participants were included in the study.
RESULTS:
A Total of 384 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, (mean age 52.96 ±12.4 years) and the women are reluctance to examine the mammogram was 72.76 %. Reasons were unavailability of x-rays at 25.45%, fear at 20.43% and not knowing about a mammogram at 15.77%. There were 16.62%, 32.29%, and 17.18% of patients with stage-III breast cancer, 5.2%, 10.41%, 8.59% stage-II and 0.26%, 1.3%, 2.34% Stage-I who was discovered in the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 respectively. The percentage of cases with stage-IV decreased from 2% in 2018 to 1.3% in 2020.
CONCLUSION:
Unavailability of x-rays, fear and not knowing about mammography, were among the most important reasons for women reluctance to examine the mammogram. As well as the increase in the percentage of women who underwent examination in the second year of activating the early detection program for breast cancer, it was noted that the stage of the disease discovered in women gradually decreased during the research years.
There is an urgent need for more efforts to improve the early detection program for breast cancer and to classify women at risk of developing breast cancer according to risk factors.
Keywords
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