Factors Associated with Delayed Presentation among Women with Breast Cancer

Purpose: Breast cancer in women is one of the most common tumors in women worldwide. Throughout Pakistan, there have been multiple reasons that cause a delay in the presentation of breast cancer and many reasons are neither reported nor studied. The objective of our study is to provide detailed estimates on the prevalence and causes of delays in order to plan targets for intervention.

Materials Methods: This is a Quasi-Experimental study done at Department of General surgery, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Medical College, Lyari Karachi from September 2018 to August 2020. We recorded the histories of 200 women by conducting structured interviews after their written consent and noted their mean age, standard deviation, early symptoms, and reasons for delayed presentation. Only patients who discovered their symptoms are included in the study.We then conducted the analysis on early and advanced stage patients using SPSS Version 20.

Results: The mean patient's age was 44.2 ± 4.13years, where 200 females were observed with a maximum age of 70 years and minimum age of 20 years in our data. Approximately 49% of breast cancers were advanced stage and about 69% had a rural residence, while painless bump was observed in 91% of women,hospital distance was less and more than 60 minutes and that’s has hindered presentation too. Similarly, about 71.2% of breast cancer patients presented with advanced-stage disease. We observed the most common factor to be a painless lump and misdiagnosed first visit.

Conclusion: Our study concludes that distance, rural residence, painless breast lump, and misdiagnosis are the most common reason of delay presentation by the patients and should be intervened.