Prevalence Estimation of Three Breast Cancer Screening Methods among Northeastern Women in Thailand

The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence of three breast cancer screening methods using weighted estimation, non-weighted estimation and the exact binomial method. Northeastern women aged 20 to 64 (n = 1,081) were randomly selected with multi-stage sampling. The results indicated that the prevalence of women who had performed Breast Self-Examination (BSE) and women who had regularly performed BSE, ranged from 75.2% (95% CI: 71.8-78.6) to 81.3% (79.1-83.5) and 49.3% (45.4-53.2) to 51.9% (49.3-54.7), respectively. The prevalence of women who had received Clinical Breast Examination (CBE) and women who had received CBE regularly ranged from 33.4% (31.1-35.8) to 38.6% (34.8-42.4) and 13.1% (11.2-14.9) to 22.3% (19.0-25.6) respectively. Except in rare cases, the prevalence (95% CI) of mammography screenings were computed by the exact binomial method: 0.03% (0.02-0.04) of women aged 40 and older had had a mammography and 0.003% (0.001-0.009) had mammography annually. Since there is such a low rate of breast cancer screenings, the government should re-evaluate its breast cancer screening policy and implement a strategy of breast cancer screenings. Special attention is required in the areas of mammography screenings and in the allocation of mammogram machines and radiologists. These goals could be perhaps best achieved through the increasing of public awareness of the breast cancer screenings.