Cancer Screening and Influencing Factors in a Island Residents

Lee, Myung Suk

Abstract

PURPOSE: This study was to investigate the cancer screening rates and influence factors in island residents. METHODS: The participants were 1,223 Shinan gun island residents. Data were collected using structured questionnaires from June 23th to September 8th, 2007 and analyzed using the SAS win 12.0 program. RESULTS: The cancer screening rate was 49.9%. There were significant differences for sex, age, living with family, economic level, smoking, exercise, private health insurance, familial history, health concern. The highest practice rate was of stomach cancer (55.9%), which is gastric endoscopic exam. The most common motivation of getting a screening test was the concern of health (40.8%), and many had no recommender of the screening test (30.0%). 58.4% of the subjects were satisfied with the screeing tests and the most frequent reason of the satisfaction was 'rapid result report' (33.1%). The msot common reason of unsatisfaction was 'long waiting time' (25.7%). Most participants agreed with the necessity of cancer screening (74.9%). More than half participants said they would participate in another cancer screening tests in the future (51.9%). Private health insurance, exercise, health concern and smoking showed significant predictors (20.6%) of obtaining cancer screening. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that health care professionals should give more attention to help the residents obtain cancer screening tests. A further study is necessary to develop any effective intervention for people who do not practice cancer screening tests.