Evaluating the accuracy of the "breast light" as a screening tool for breast cancer in Iraq

3^rd Euro Nursing & Medicare Summit

July 27-29, 2015 Valencia, Spain

Nada A S Al-Alwan

Baghdad University, Iraq

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among the Iraqi population and it is the leading cause of death among women. The poor survival reflects the limited public awareness and the week early detection strategies. The Breast light has been designed as a domestic breast checker that aids in breast cancer awareness. A randomly selected sample of 150 female patients, who visited the Main Training and Research Centre for early detection of breast cancer in Baghdad, was examined with the Breast light device. The findings were compared with the results of clinical breast examination, mammography, ultrasound, and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as the gold standard for sensitivity and specificity. Breast cancer was detected in 36 patients (24%); all of the cases were confirmed histologically. Among those, the Breast light demonstrated positive findings in 80.56% (29/137 cases), i.e., signifying True Positive results by the device. On the other hand, in 19.44% (7/36 cases), the device failed to reveal any positive finding (False Negative). FNAC revealed benign pathology in 73.72% (101/137 cases) of the study sample. Of those, negative findings were recorded using the device in 53.47%, (54/101 cases - True Negative), while in the remaining 46.53% (47/101), the device yielded positive findings (False Positive). The most common pathological causes for false positive results were inflammatory associated conditions. In conclusion, although the accuracy of the Breast Light in detecting palpable malignant breast lumps was significant, nevertheless, the observed high false positive detection rate and the significantly low specificity of the device in excluding malignancy preclude its use as a screening tool for breast cancer.

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