A hospital based survey to evaluate knowledge, awareness and perceived barriers regarding breast cancer screening among females in Bangladesh

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis of breast cancer is essential for mitigating its related morbidity and mortality. Therefore, high awareness is required. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to evaluate the knowledge, awareness and perceived barriers among females in Bangladesh regarding breast cancer. METHODS: A hospital-based survey was performed from April 2019 to June 2019. A total of 500 females aged >18 years were recruited to the study. The participants were selected by trained personnel and physicians via simple random sampling. RESULTS: The mean participant age was 37.13 ± 12.66 years. Among all the participants, 79% were married, 4% were single, 3% were divorced and 14% were widowed. We observed that 80.6% of respondents were housewives, 5% were students and 14.4% were working women. The participants had a severe lack of knowledge and awareness, and perceived barriers regarding breast cancer screening. Breast cancer was more linked to personal history, occupation and, marital status. Shyness, fear, lack of knowledge and deficient awareness programs were the major perceived barriers. CONCLUSION: Educational interventions and proper, appropriate and socially acceptable awareness programs will help to ameliorate knowledge and awareness by addressing barriers regarding breast cancer among the females in Bangladesh.