title: A study on risk factors of breast cancer among patients attending the tertiary care hospital, in udupi district.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Cancer has become one of the ten leading causes of death in India. Breast cancer is the most common diagnosed malignancy in India, it ranks second to cervical cancer. An increasing trend in incidence is reported from various registries of national cancer registry project and now India is a country with largest estimated number of breast cancer deaths worldwide.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To study the factors associated with breast cancer.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To study the association between breast cancer and selected exposure variables and to identify risk factors for breast cancer.
  
  
  METHODS
  A hospital based Case control study was conducted at Shirdi Sai Baba Cancer Hospital and Research Center, Manipal, Udupi District.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Total 188 participants were included in the study, 94 cases and 94 controls. All the study participants were between 25 to 69 years of age group. The cases and controls were matched by ± 2 years age range. Non vegetarian diet was one of the important risk factors (OR 2.80, CI 1.15-6.81). More than 7 to 12 years of education (OR 4.84 CI 1.51-15.46) had 4.84 times risk of breast cancer as compared with illiterate women.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The study suggests that non vegetarian diet is the important risk factor for Breast Cancer and the risk of Breast Cancer is more in educated women as compared with the illiterate women.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This is a Hospital based study so generalisability of the findings could be limited.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, Manipal University, Manipal, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Ramchandra
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kamath
authors.forename: Kamaleshwar S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Mahajan
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ashok
authors.forename: T S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Sanal
keywords: Breast cancer; abortion; diet; menarche; risk factors