Cervical Cancer Awareness and Practice of Pap Smear Test Among Women with Gynecological Problems

Abstract

Introduction: Cervical cancer is the most common cancer in women in Nepal. Pap smear test is the most important screening test for cervical cancer, which helps in reducing mortality from it. This study is to assess the knowledge of cancer cervix and practice of Pap smear test and to analyze the impact of educational status on them.
 Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study, carried out among the married women who attended the Out Patient Department for gynecological problems at Kathmandu Medical College. Structured questionnaires were used to collect the data. The questionnaire consisted of three sections which included the demographic profile in first part , second part included assessment of the knowledge of cancer cervix, and third part included evaluation of the utilization of Pap smear test.
 Results: A total of 205 married women were included in the study. Out of them, 74% were aware of cancer cervix. Only 39% of women were aware of Pap smear test. Pap smear test coverage was 16.6% in studied population. Main reason of not doing Pap smear test was lack of knowledge of the test. High educational status of the women had significant positive impact on knowledge of cancer cervix and practice of Pap smear test.
 Conclusions: The knowledge of cancer cervix was good in our women, but knowledge and the practice of Pap smear test was poor. Good educational status of the women was found to influence the on knowledge of cancer cervix and uptake of Pap smear test.

The effect of web‐based education on Pap smear behaviours of teachers

“…In the study, 37.6% of the teachers knew that having three or more sexual partners is a risk factor for CC. In Nigeria (Ezeruigbo Chinwe & UdeNebonta Abigail, 2015), America (Love & Tanjasiri, 2012) and Nepal (Thapa, 2018), the rate was found to be significantly higher than the study findings.…”

“…In this study, the distress of gynaecologic examination, having no symptoms and having no time were the main reasons for not having a PST by teachers. Consistently with those of published studies, the reasons for not having a PST were as follows: embarrassment (Aldohaian, Alshammari, & Arafah, 2019;Salem et al, 2017;Shankar et al, 2018;Toye et al, 2017;Yanikkerem, Selçuk, & Esmeray, 2018), fear of pathology (Abdullah et al, 2011;Salem et al, 2017;Yanikkerem et al, 2018), not having time (Aldohaian et al, 2019;Elamurugan et al, 2016;Gümüş & Çam, 2011;Salem et al, 2017;Shankar et al, 2018), not knowing where it was done (Aldohaian et al, 2019;Ubajaka et al, 2015;Yanikkerem et al, 2018), the fear that the procedure would be painful (Aldohaian et al, 2019;Salem et al, 2017;Thapa, 2018;Yanikkerem et al, 2018), having any symptoms of the disease (Elamurugan et al, 2016;Salem et al, 2017) and thinking that they do not have the risk of developing CC (Salem et al, 2017;Ubajaka et al, 2015).…”

“…In this study, the effect of the web-based education on PST behaviours of teachers was evaluated. In our study, the rate of hearing CC was higher in the teachers (98.9%) compared to undeveloped countries such as 52.0% in Nigeria (Ezeruigbo Chinwe & UdeNebonta Abigail, 2015) and 74.0% in Nepal (Thapa, 2018). In the present study, 12.2% of the teachers received information about CC and the finding is quite low from the studies conducted in Turkey with women who applied to health institution (38.1%-47.7%) (Gökgöz & Aktaş, 2015; Gümüş & Çam, 2011).…”

“…In this study, most of the teachers (82.9%) were aware of the PST and about one-fourth of the teachers (25.5%) stated that they had received education about the PST. When the studies were examined, hearing rates of the PST were 69.4% in Nigeria (Ajah et al, 2015), 79.0% in India (Elamurugan et al, 2016), 70.0% in Kenya (Masika et al, 2015) and 39.5% in Nepal (Thapa, 2018).…”

Knowledge and Practice Regarding Cervical Cancer Screening Among Women Attending Gynecology OPD, B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Dharan, Nepal

“…Despite the cervical cancer screening and prevention has been a part of public screening program in Nepal, very few women receive screening services and they don't have sufficient knowledge about cervical cancer screening [8][9][10][11][12]. Hence, the study was conducted to identify the knowledge and practice of cervical cancer screening among women attending gynecology OPD.…”