Knowledge and Practice of Breast Self-Examination (BSE) among Urban Women of a Low-Resource Country

Objective: To assess the knowledge, attitude & practices of breast self-examination among women residing in the district 'Central' of Karachi and to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices of breast self-examination among high risk Ca breast women residing in the district central of Karachi. Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional, questionnaire-based, study was carried out among women attending a charitable hospital in Karachi, in 2018. The data was collected through a convenience sampling technique, and was analyzed by using SPSS version 24.0. Descriptive statistics of socio-demographic variables were presented as mean ± SD for continuous variables and frequency or percentages for categorical variables. The Chi-square test was used to test the association between knowledge, attitude and practice regarding Ca breast and breast self-examination, p-value <0.05 consider significant, Results: The mean age of the 172 participants was 30.73±6.84 years, 34.9% were educated with primary education, and 41.9% had 5-7 family members. 90.1% participants were married and 92.4% were housewives. All were Muslims. 65.7% females had heard of BSE and source of information was their family members. However, 50.6 % were practicing BSE, while 24.1% execute it monthly, 75.9% preferred to examine their breasts with fingers of the opposite hand, 77.3% of females agreed BSE was important for breast health. There was an association between age and practices of BSE and was 63.3% highest among participants aged 31-40 years and was lowest 42.7% among those between 20-30 years of age (p=0.041). About 75% of the females who were graduated, performed BSE as compared to only 40% uneducated females (p=0.270) Conclusion: The practices of breast self-examination were low and there is dire need of implementation of health education programme on BSE for early detection of Ca breast. The practice of breast self-examination is low and required implementation of health education programme on BSE for early detection of Ca beast.