Risk Factors in Breast Cancer Among Women Admitted in Tertiary Care Hospital¬ - A Case Control Study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Breast cancer is most common malignancy affecting women worldwide. Breast cancer is second most important cancer among Indian women after cervical cancer. There are 2 to 2.5 million cancer cases at any given point of time in India. In Karnataka there are about 1.5 lakh prevalent cases of Breast cancer and 35000 new cases added every year. Present study attempts to find out some of the risk factors of Breast cancer among women admitted in tertiary care hospital in Belagavi. OBJECTIVE To know the risk factors in breast cancer among women admitted in tertiary care hospital. METHODOLOGY A case control study, conducted from January to December 2015 among women admitted in Dr. Prabhakar kore Tertiary care hospital, Belagavi. A total of 210 participants (42 newly diagnosed breast cancer cases and 168 age matched controls) were included in the study. Ethical clearance was obtained by J. N. Medical College Institutional Ethics Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from every participant. Data was collected using a predesigned questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done using odd’s ratio, χ2 test, Univariate and Multiple logistic regression analysis to find out the risk factors associated with breast cancer and ‘p’ value less than 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS Majority i.e. 40.5%, 38.0% and 36.9% of cases, hospital controls and community controls belonged to 41-50 years. 54.7%, 46.4% and 32.1% of cases, hospital and community controls were illiterate respectively. Larger proportion 45.0% of cases 75.0% of hospital controls and 93.0% community controls were housewives, 48.0% cases and 56% of controls belonged to joint families. As regards to socio-economic status, among cases majority i.e. 28.4% belonged to each of class IV and V, among hospital controls 30.9% belonged to each of class III and IV and among community controls 42.8% belonged to class III. On performing Univariate analysis, the Risk factors such as Religion, lower level of education, Occupation, lower socio-economic status, type of family, age at menopause, age at first child, non-veg diet and BMI >23kg/m2 were associated with breast cancer. On performing Multivariate analysis and thereby removing the effect of confounders, the risk factors independently associated with breast cancer were religion, occupation, lower socio-economic status (class IV & V), age at first child <18years and non-vegetarian diet. CONCLUSION The risk factors such as lower socio-economic status, religion, lower level of education, occupation, type of family unmarried status of woman, late attainment of menopause, absence of breast feeding, overweight, previous history of benign breast disease, family history of breast cancer were associated with breast cancer.