สาเหตุของการเข้ารับการรักษาล่าช้าในสตรีไทยที่เป็นมะเร็งเต้านม ในโรงพยาบาลรามาธิบดี Causes of Delayed Seeking Treatment in Thai Women with Breast Cancer in Ramathibodi Hospital

บทคัดย่อ

The purposes of this descriptive research were to examine the reasons of delayed treatment in Thai women with breast cancer. Participants were 60 new cases of women with breast cancer recruited from out patients department in Ramathibodi hospital. Data were collected during December 2015 to December 2017. Two instruments were used 1) the Demographic, Disease, and Treatment Questionnaires; and 2) The Breast Cancer Delay Questionnaire modified from Unger – Saldana and colleagues (2012). Data were analyzed by descriptive statistic.

Results reported that age of participants was varied from 35-80 years (mean = 51.73, SD = 10.33) mostly of them were married (61.7%), had job (65%), and had bachelor degree / master degree (43.4%). Majority of them were diagnosed with breast cancer stage 3 (63.4%), had axillary lymph node metastasis (78.2%), and had axillary lymph node with other organ metastasis (20.1%). The most organ metastases was lung. Results about patients delay treatment are as follow; most of them found abnormal symptom by themselves (98.3%).  The most symptom was mass at breast (91.7%). Causes of delayed treatment perceived by patients were patients delayed (83.3%) and health care system delayed such as process of referring or delayed diagnosis (23.3%). The reason of delayed treatment most patients thought that mass was not cancer according to absence of pain (53.3%). Participants selected to visit a hospital because of worse symptom and had more other symptoms (43%). The average time since had symptom to treatment was 15.62 months (SD = 13.89).

Result findings can provided an evidenced data for health care providers to give knowledge for Thai women about breast cancer with breast self-examination campaign to promote self-awareness and early detect of the disease. Moreover, giving the knowledge may promote the understanding about the presenting symptoms, the changing of breast before cancer, and side effect of treatment.  These reasons will bring these women to receive early treatment with high effective cure.