title: Profile of cervical cancer patients attending Tertiary Care Hospitals of Mangalore, Karnataka: A 4 year retrospective study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To describe the sociodemographic characteristics and clinical profile of women presenting with cervical carcinoma and to identify factors associated with the timing of presentation and prognosis.
  
  
  METHODS
  A record-based descriptive study was carried out from 1stFebruary to 31stMarch 2014 at Tertiary Care Hospitals of Mangalore. The study population included women who were diagnosed with cervical carcinoma from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2013. A pretested data extraction sheet aimed at collecting information from the inpatient records was used as the study instrument. The collected data were entered and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 227 patients were included in the study. Mean (Standard Deviation) age of diagnosis of cervical cancer was found to be 55 ± 11 years. Majority of the women were Hindus (88.5%) and 51.0% of the women had occupational activities out of which manual labor was the most common. Forty-eight percent of the patients presented in the late stages. Squamous cell carcinoma was found to be the most common histological type. It was also observed that a slightly higher proportion of women with an age >49 years presented in late stages of the disease (n= 70, 48.6%) compared to women <49 years of age (n= 28, 46.7%); however, the difference was not statistically significant (P= 0.800).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study found out a higher proportion of late presentation by the patients. It emphasizes the need for the development and implementation of an efficient screening cum prevention program for cervical cancer and to continue active research in the domains of identifying all possible risk factors and steps to mitigate them.
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Aadhya
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Vaman
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kulkarni
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Unnikrishnan
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Bhaskaran
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Meher
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Singha
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Saad
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mujtahedi
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Anshul
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chatrath
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Mallika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Sridhar
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Rekha
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Thapar
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: P Prasanna
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Mithra
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Nithin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Ramesh
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Holla
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: B B
authors.initials: BB
authors.lastname: Darshan
authors.affiliation: Department of Community Medicine, Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Avinash
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kumar
keywords: India; retrospective studies; risk factors; uterine cervical neoplasms