Perceptions Regarding Oral Cancer Among Medical and Nursing Graduates: A Cross Sectional Study in a Medical College in South Karnataka

Abstract

ntroduction: Oral cancer ranks sixth among all types of cancer. India has the largest number of oral cancer cases and one-third of the total burden of globally.Though early detection of oral cancer provide long term survival and affordable healthcare, it still poses a signicant public health problem in India due to diagnosis in advanced stages, lack of accesibility to trained healthcare professionals and economical constraints for advanced facilities This cross sectional, lack of accesibility based study was conducted at Mandya Institute of MedicalMaterials and Methods: Sciences, Mandya to assess the perceptions regarding oral cancer among 100 MBBS and 100Nursing graduates from South Karnataka. A structured proforma was used to interview the participants which included (a) General information (b) Problem statement (c) Risk factors (d) Signs & Symptoms (e) Diagnosis, and (f) Treatment & prevention. Data was entered in MS excel spreadsheet. Descriptive analysis like proportion, mean, standard deviation, etc. was used. Statistical tests to detect signicant difference or association like T test, chi square test, etc was used. Results: The mean age of medical graduates was 25.9 ± 0.7 years and the mean age of nursing graduates was 23.1 ± 0.8 years. In this study 61.0% of the medical graduates were males whereas 86.0% of nursing graduates were female. The knowledge regarding the disease burden among medical graduates was 41.0% and that among nursing graduates was 23.0%. 86% of MBBS graduates and 84% of nursing graduates perceived smoking, chewing tobacco and tobacco with alcohol as risk factors for oral cancer. Most of the medical graduates (82.5%) and nursing graduates (87.5%) perceived white patch and weight loss as clinical features of oral cancer.Clinical examination as an aid to diagnose oral cancer was upheld by 89.0% of medical and 95.0% of nursing graduates. 95.0% of medical graduates knew that early stages could be treated with surgery and chemo- radiotherapy was preferred for advanced stage of the disease compared to 42.0% nursing graduates.