Men's Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Breast Cancer: A Descriptive Study

Breast cancer (BC) is an important disease for women. BC influences both patient's and relatives' lives. Especially, husbands/boyfriends/ lovers are the ones that are affected mostly. In this study, it was aimed to introduce knowledge and attitudes of men toward BC and their sources of information about BC.

This descriptive study was conducted with men applied to a University Hospital in Istanbul (Turkey-2018). The ethics permission was obtained from The Clinical Research Ethics Committee. Data regarding socio-demographic characteristics with the knowledge and attitudes towards BC were collected with a questionnaire specific to the research. Statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05.

In the study, 240 men (mean age: 36.2±10.6 years,min: 18.0, max: 63.0) were interviewed. Fifty four percent of men declared that they would not marry someone with BC and/or someone who had mastectomy. Thirty four percent of participants thought that a woman with BC should conceal the disease. The mean BC knowledge score was 234.1±128.0 (median: 227.5, min: 0, max: 571.0) among the total which was 600.

A significant proportion of men did not have sufficient and accurate knowledge about BC. If the BC knowledge scores increase, there was an association with more positive attitudes. Negative attitudes of men related with BC of a woman may be an indicator of stigmatization. If it is aimed to increase support of men for women dealing with BC, it is recommended that BC awareness activities should be prepared to include men in order to increase their knowledge and to change their attitudes into a more positive way.