Educational interventions on breast cancer in men and women: a necessity in primary healthcare

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common diseases in the global population. It most commonly presents in women; however, there has been an increase in the number of men diagnosed with the disease, although at a lower rate. Its specific characteristics and associated risk factors mean that preventative measures are considered to be one of the most important methods of avoiding BC. Therefore, education is a fundamental part of this process. The objective of this study is to report on the educational interventions on BC carried out in healthcare between 2016 and 2021. To this end, an integrative review was carried out using the following databases: PubMed (NCBI), Science Direct, Scopus, SciELO and Google Scholar, using the keywords ‘breast cancer’, ‘intervention education’, ‘prevention’ and the Boolean operator ‘AND’. Quantitative, full-text articles in English, Spanish or Portuguese were included. Finally, 19 articles were selected for analysis and it was found that, with regard to educational interventions on BC carried out in healthcare, one article included men and women and the remaining 18 included only women, with interventions carried out in sessions, workshops, in stages and using dynamic techniques. Therefore, there is a pressing need for educational interventions on BC for men and women at all stages of life; however, priority should be given to the young population in order to allow for early prevention. These interventions do not generate costs for the health sector, but they have a positive effect by increasing knowledge and promoting self-care.