Determinants of monthly breast self-examination among women in Samut Songkhram Province, Thailand

Abstract

The breast cancer incidence rate is highest among women in Thailand. Monthly breast self-examination (BSE) which is simple, inexpensive and effective to detect breast cancer is recommended for every woman as the first step for early detection. Therefore, cross-sectional study was conducted to identify factors associated with monthly BSE among Thai women aged 20 years old and over in Samut Songkhram Province, Thailand. Data collection procedure was carried out from April to May, 2017. A sample of 405 women was selected by multi-stage cluster sampling to participate to face to face interviews. Chi-square tests and multiple logistic regression were used to examine association between independent variables and monthly BSE.

The results of this study showed that only 18.8% of women reported doing monthly BSE while 47.2% never practised BSE. In Chi-square test, variables significantly associated with monthly BSE were family income, health insurance situation, breast cancer knowledge, BSE knowledge, health motivation, BSE training experiences, and mammography experiences. After adjusting for other factors in the multiple logistic regression model, breast cancer knowledge (Adj OR= 3.85; 95% CI= 1.95-7.62), BSE knowledge (Adj OR= 7.31; 95% CI= 2.98-17.93), health motivation (Adj OR= 2.10; 95% CI= 1.14-3.39) and BSE training experiences (Adj OR= 2.85; 95% CI= 1.48-5.49) remained significantly associated with monthly BSE.

These findings suggest that providing BSE training to the women is the key in promoting monthly BSE. Therefore, promoting effective BSE training to increase their knowledge about BSE and breast cancer will result in a widespread of monthly BSE among women.