No abstract

Cancer of the breast in women is a major health burden worldwide. Uncurable cancer can be prevented and controlled by healthful diet, lifestyle practices, good habits of hygiene, behaviour and awareness programme followed by diet counselling. Diet counselling plays an important role in motivating individual in the development of healthy habits and attitudes. Hence an attempt was taken to assess the knowledge on various risk factors contributing to breast cancer and to study the impact of diet counseling among selected women with breast cancer undergoing different treatment modalities. Using stratified random technique 190 women with breast cancer was selected and were grouped into two based on the treatment modality, Group A constituted 100 women with breast cancer undergoing surgery and radiation, and 90 under combination of chemo, radiation and surgery. Software was developed using dot net, to impart and assess the knowledge related to cancer. The software consists of knowledge test covering different aspects of breast cancer and diet. Questions with and without scores was designed to create awareness on breast cancer as well as to familiarize with the skill to operate the software product. The scores ranged from (1-3), (4-6), (7-9) labelled as poor, fair and good respectively for each question. Dietary knowledge of the subjects improved significantly after diet counselling. The mean score of the Group A subjects before evaluation was 25 which increased to 35 after education indicating significant gain in nutrition and food related knowledge. The gain in knowledge was significant at P < 0.001.The mean score of group B case subjects increased from 20 to 55 after intervention which shows that the diet counselling was found to be effective and the gain in knowledge was statistically significant at P < 0.001.