title: Breast and cervical cancer-screening uptake among females in Ardabil, northwest Iran: a community-based study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Breast and cervical cancers are the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer and cause of cancer-related deaths in Iranian females. In contrast to previous studies, this study was carried out with a large sample size for assessment of breast self-examination (BSE)-, clinical breast examination (CBE)-, mammography-, and Pap smear-uptake rates and determination of associations among these screening behaviors with sociodemographic and cognitive variables in Azeri females.
  
  
  METHODS
  This was a cross-sectional, community-based study that was carried out among 1,134 females 20-60 years old during March-June 2016. Data-collection variables included sociodemographic questions, screening behaviors for breast and cervical cancer, self-efficacy, beliefs, and barriers to breast and cervical cancer screening. Collected data were analyzed by SPSS version 13 usingχ2, Mann-WhitneyU, and logistic regression tests.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Among the 1,134 participants, 53.9%, 9.8%, and 28.1% had done BSE, CBE, and Pap smear tests, respectively, and among the 625 females aged >40 years, 187 (29.9%) had done the mammography test. Moreover, 416 (36.7%), 103 (16.5%), and 64 (5.6%) females had done BSE, mammography, and CBE regularly, respectively. Beliefs, barriers, income, health insurance, number of children, and age were all important factors for BSE and regular BSE and mammography. Females who had high belief scores were more likely to undertake mammography (odds ratio [OR]: 1.2, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.03-1.5), regular mammography (OR: 4.2, 95% CI: 1.9-9.3), regular CBE (OR: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.2-1.3), and Pap smears (OR: 1.2, 95% CI: 1.1-1.4). Also, females who had high self-efficacy scores were more likely to perform regular BSE (OR: 1.8, 95% CI: 1.4-2.5) and mammography (OR: 2.5, 95% CI: 1.4-4.6) than females with lower self-efficacy scores.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The frequency of breast and cervical cancer screening was low in our study. The findings of this study indicated that beliefs, self-efficacy, and barriers were important predictive factors of cancer-screening behavior among the females studied.
authors.affiliation: Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Ardabil University of Medical Sciences, Ardabil, Iran.
authors.forename: Esmaeil
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Farzaneh
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran.
authors.forename: Heshmatolah
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Heydari
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology.
authors.forename: Ali Akbar
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Shekarchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, Ardabil University of Medical Sciences, Ardabil, Iran.
authors.forename: Aziz
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kamran
keywords: breast cancer; cervical cancer; females; screening