Yazd Breast Cancer Project Profile; a Community Based Trial for the Evaluation of Self-Examination and Physical Examination of the Breast Cancer Disease



Miller AB¹ ; Harrirchi I² ; Lotfi MH³ ; Noori M⁴ ; Mirzaei M⁵ ; Jafarizadea M⁵ ; Sadeghian MR⁵ ; Minosepehr M⁵ Show Affiliations
Source: Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences Published:2015

Abstract

There is some evidence to suggest that a benefit might be derived from a program that incorporated both annual physical examination of the breast (BPx) and the teaching of breast selfexamination (BSE). Current investigation presents the profile of a multicenter community based intervention for evaluating the effect of BSE+BPx on the reduction of morbidity and mortality due to breast cancer amongst women residing in urban areas of Yazd (Iran) from 2008 to 2018. There were three distinctive phases in this trial with 10 years duration: pilot phase with the duration of 1 year, active intervention phase with 4 rounds of annual screening of BPx+BSE and follow up phase with 5 years duration. Tools of enquiry included a pretested questionnaire, repeated annual physical examination of the breast and more importantly mammography, sonography, and fine needle aspiration (FNA). Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percent, mean (SD), tests of chi-square and student t-test with 95% confidence level. Comparison of socio-demographic and socio-economic factors such as age, age at marriage, family size, number oflive births, occupation, education level, total family income and marital status showed that no significant difference was seen between the groups (P>0.05). A response rate of 84.5% was seen by participants of the experiment group visiting the health centers for the first BPx. Our results showed that except for the education and marital status, the difference in other maindemographic and socio-economic factors between the groups were not significant, and the response rate of individuals in the experiment group was at an acceptable level. © 2015, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved.