Abstract:
Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed among women. Overall, it is the fifth leading cause of
cancer deaths in the world. However, it is being highest mortality among all cancer death in women. Global
incidence of breast cancer has been rising over the last few decades. Knowledge about breast cancer is very
important in the prevention of the disease. The objective of this study was to assess the level of knowledge and
examine the practice of female students about self-breast examination in Faculty of Health-Care Sciences,
Eastern University, Sri Lanka. A cross sectional descriptive study involving 222 female students aged 20-30
years was carried out using a17 item structured self-administered questionnaire between March and
September 2016. Among total participants, 23.4% were nursing and 76.6% were medical students. Ethnically,
55.9% were Sinhalese, 20.2% were Tamils and 23.9% were Muslims. Majority of the participants (96.8%)
heard about breast cancer. Source of information such as Newspapers/Magazines (78.8%) lectures (60.8%)
and internet (66.2%) were respectively. Most of them (82.9%) heard about breast self-examination (BSE) but
only 33% have ever done it; of those, 9.6% did it because one of their family members had breast cancer.
Awareness about risk factors such as positive family history (82.9%), use of oral contraceptive pills (58.6%),
no breast feeding (68.0%), and early menarche (45.9%) were respectively. Breast lump, recent onset nipple
discharge, pain on breast and skin changes of breast were stated as clinical features by 95.9%, 84.2%, 71.2%
and 79.3% participants, respectively. Knowledge of treatments methods such as surgery (96.8%), radiotherapy
(88.3%), chemotherapy (82%), and hormone pills (24.8%) were respectively. The knowledge regarding breast
cancer was good but less than half of the students had performed breast self-examination in their life.
