Evaluation of women knowledge and attitude regarding cervical cancer early detection.

At European level, Romania unfortunately comes first as far as mortality due to cervical cancer is concerned, mortality rate recording a continuous increase due to disease detection in advanced stages. In this context, we followed an assessment of women's cognitive and attitudinal fund in relation to early detection of cervical cancer, through the application of a questionnaire on a batch of 617 women with ages from 18 to 75-year-old, with various levels of education, residents of Craiova City and communes from Dolj County. Statistic processing of their answers indicates that 43.3% of the inquired subjects have not had a routine gynecological exam for at least seven years (or even never), which is more often found in the subgroup of women from the rural environment, with ages over 35 years and with an elementary educational level (p<0.001). 65.8% of the women have not done a Babes-Papanicolau test for seven years or even never, residence area, age and education level being once again discrimination factors between the subgroups. The reasons usually put forward as a justification for the failure to do the cytological test for the past three years are negligence (23.8%), the lack of information on the existence of such an investigation (18.2%), the absence of a genital pathology (12.8%) or of a medical recommendation (11.8%). Results suggest the need to provide uniform accessibility of the population to health services, by developing and implementing new strategies of educational and sanitary intervention mainly in rural communities.