Breast Cancer Screening Barriers from the Womans Perspective: a Meta-synthesis

Abstract

Background: The principal aim of health service providers in the field of breast cancer is to detect and treat lesions at an appropriate time. Therefore, identification of barriers to screening can be very helpful. The present study aimed to systematically review the qualitative studies for extracting and reporting the barriers of screening for breast cancer from the womans perspective.

Materials and methods: In this systematic review; Pubmed, Google Scholar, Ovid Scopus, Cochrane Library, Iranmedex, and SID were searched using the keywords: screening barriers, cancer, qualitative studies, breast and their Persian equivalents, and the needed data were extracted and analyzed using an extraction table. To assess the quality of the studies, the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool was used.

Results: From 2,134 related articles that were found, 21 articles were eventually included in the study. The most important barriers from the point of view of 1,084 women were lack of knowledge, access barriers (financial, geographical, cultural), fear (of results and pain), performance of service providers, women's beliefs, procrastination of screening, embarrassment, long wait for getting an appointment, language problems, and previous negative experiences. Articles' assessment score was 68.9.

Conclusions: Increasing women's knowledge, reducing the costs of screening services, cultural promotion for screening, presenting less painful methods, changing beliefs of health service providers, provision of privacy for giving service, decreasing the waiting time, and providing high quality services in a respectful manner can be effective ways to increase breast cancer screening.