Knowledge of Reproductive System Cancers Their Tr

Authors: Irena Rot Imhokhai Ogah Richard J Wassersug

Publish Date: 2012/04/12

Volume: 27, Issue: 3, Pages: 559-565

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Abstract

We explored via an online questionnaire knowledge of breast and reproductive system cancers in patients and nonpatients who access the internet for information on these diseases We compared that knowledge to the attention the diseases have received in medical research and on the Internet Data were collected from 690 respondents 37  male 63  female about their knowledge of prevalence lethality treatments and side effects of testicular prostate breast uterine cervical and ovarian cancers Most males but only half of the female participants were patients themselves Although participants showed better knowledge of cancers specific to their own sex both sexes felt familiar with breast cancer and less aware of other cancers Women were as aware as men of side effects of treatments for male reproductive cancers Sex differences in awareness appear to reflect different attitudes towards illness bias toward females as caregivers and the disproportionate media attention given to breast cancerThis work was supported by an operating grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada to R Wassersug We thank Drs John Oliffe Annette Street Lori Wood and Virginia Edwards for their critical comments on draft manuscript We additionally thank the managers of the cancerrelated websites who agreed to post our survey

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