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Assessment Awareness of Public About Breast Cancer and its Screening Measurements in Asir Region, KSA

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Indian Journal of Surgical Oncology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 15 April 2019

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Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) has a major impact on women’s health worldwide. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is no exception, where it is considered the most common malignancy, embodying the second leading cause of cancer deaths after lung cancer. In today’s world, people are more health conscious and more aware of different medical specialties. Despite the tremendous advancements in education, there seems to be a limited knowledge among the public regarding this issue. Various studies have been conducted in many regions to determine the perception/awareness about breast cancer. The present study is of the first of its type in our region, assessing the awareness of the public about breast cancer and its screening measurements. As per our knowledge, there is no study that estimated the awareness of breast cancer and its screening measurements among the public in the Asir region. Therefore, this study aims to estimate the awareness of breast cancer and its screening measurements among public and assess the knowledge about Breast Self-Examination (BSE) and their opinion about its effectiveness in early diagnosis of breast cancer to detect the relationship between awareness and socioeconomic status. This study is a cross-sectional prospective study, with a sample of 1046 participants aged between 12 and 80 years (male and female) from the Asir region evaluated by questionnaire after attaining consent. The selection of participants was based on the simple random sampling method. The majority of participants were of age 20 to less than 30 years (56.9%). About half of them were males (52.7%). The majority was single (61.2%). Most of them (74.0%) have a high education level (University and more). About one-third of the participants (32.7%) worked in the medical field, and most of them worked in the non-medical field (46.6%). Regarding general knowledge, the score was 60.2%, which represented a relatively good knowledge. The overall knowledge regarding breast cancer as recorded by our population reported that only 18.8% had good knowledge. Participants of this resettlement colony have poor knowledge about breast cancer, be it about risk factors, signs, and symptoms, or early detection procedures, where the overall knowledge score was only 18.8%.

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Change history

  • 15 April 2019

    With the author(s)’ decision to step back from Open Choice, the copyright of the article changed on April 2019 to © Indian Association of Surgical Oncology 2019 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of copyright.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Medicine, King Khalid University, Abha, 61411, Saudi Arabia

    Safar M. Alshahrani, Khalid A. Fayi, Saeed H. Alshahrani, Dhafer S. Alahmari, Khaled M. Al Bejadi, Dhafer M. Alahmari & Talal M. Alshahrani

  2. Department of General Surgery, Assir Central Hospital, Abha, Saudi Arabia

    Motaz N. Alsharif

Authors
  1. Safar M. Alshahrani
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  2. Khalid A. Fayi
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  3. Saeed H. Alshahrani
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  4. Dhafer S. Alahmari
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  5. Khaled M. Al Bejadi
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Correspondence to Safar M. Alshahrani.

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The official ethical clearance was obtained from the King Khalid University Ethical Committee; the private information of the students was used for research only.

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The original version of this article was revised: "With the author(s)’ decision to step back from Open Choice, the copyright of the article changed on April 2019 to © Indian Association of Surgical Oncology 2019 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of copyright.

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Alshahrani, S.M., Fayi, K.A., Alshahrani, S.H. et al. Assessment Awareness of Public About Breast Cancer and its Screening Measurements in Asir Region, KSA. Indian J Surg Oncol 10, 357–363 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13193-019-00899-5

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