Knowledge, attitude and practice of women towards self breast examination in the rural field practice area of IGGMC, Nagpur, Maharashtra

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among females. In India, breast cancer is the top most cancer with about 13.6% new cases diagnosed in 2020. Current knowledge of the aetiology of breast cancer offers little prospect of primary prevention. So secondary prevention like breast screening, which include self breast examination have to be done. The present study was designed to determine the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding BSE among women aged 18 years and above. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted on 241 females above 18 years of age in rural health care training centre affiliated to IGGMC, Nagpur. All consecutive participants were interviewed in person using a predesigned and pre-tested proforma. SPSS Version 20 was used to analyse the data collected. Results: It was seen that the mean age of participants was 29.98±7.382 years The majority of participants were belonged to the Hindu religion (63.9%) and nuclear family (82.57%). Majority of participants (68.05%) were having poor knowledge about BSE, most of the participants were having good attitude (51.45%), majority of participants (53.11%) were having poor practice to BSE. Conclusions: BSE is one of the most effective preventive health behaviour for the early detection of breast cancer. In this study, it is evident that knowledge about BSE is low. This indicate that there is a need for Health education about breast cancer and BSE among the rural population of India to improve the KAP about BSE for early detection and better survival.