Knowledge, attitude and practice of female undergraduate students toward breast cancer screening: using breast self examination as a case study

Breast cancer remains the most common cancer related cause of death among women. Late diagnosis and presentation seen among our patients reflect paucity of knowledge about breast cancer and breast cancer screening programmes. This study determines the knowledge based of our university undergraduate female students about breast cancer and breast self examination an inexpensive technique for breast cancer screening. It is a questionnaire based prospective study among university undergraduate female students here in referred to as respondents who were given open ended structured questionnaires to collect relevant data about breast cancer and breast self examination. Out of four hundred and fifty nine (97.04%) of the respondents who had knowledge about breast cancer, only 201 (42.49%) of them heard about breast cancer screening. However, 95 (47.26%) of the 201 respondents agreed that breast cancer can be detected early through breast cancer screening. Eighty four (17.75%) respondents have heard about self breast examination out of which only about a third (36.90%) practice it. Considering the knowledge on self breast examination only 3 (9.67%) out of the thirty one respondents who practiced it, perform it correctly. In conclusion most of our respondents have heard about breast cancer but have insufficient knowledge on breast cancer and breast cancer screening to harness the effective positive attitude towards self breast examination.