Tendency to breast reconstruction after breast mastectomy among Iranian women with breast cancer

BACKGROUND Women with the medical history of breast cancer constitute the biggest group of patients who survived cancer. Despite the high rate of mastectomy after breast cancer in Iran; only limited patients elect reconstruction surgery. The aim of our study was to evaluate the rate of tendency to breast reconstruction (BR) surgery among women with breast cancer who had mastectomy but not undergone reconstruction. METHODS This cross sectional study was conducted in Mashhad, north east of Iran during 2013. A total of 108 patients with mastectomy due to breast cancer were selected through convenience sampling and completed the questionnaire. Demographic data collected and 21 items of questionnaire were compared between patients with and without tendency to BR. Data were analyzed using Chi square, t tests and logistic regression. RESULTS In this study 62 (57.4%) patients had a tendency to BR and 46 (42.6%) had not. The mean (±SD) age of patients in first group was 43.3±8.03 and 49.6±9.9 in the second group (p<0.001). Frequency of agreement about impact of BR on appearance and beauty, mood, family living conditions and their opinion (p<0.001), lack of sufficient information (p=0.01), physician's opinion (p<0.001) and priority of cancer breast treatment (p=0.02) were significantly different between the two groups. CONCLUSION More than half of the patients had a tendency to BR although they did not go under the surgery yet. Identification of factors that can increase the tendency and factors that help to change the intention to action are important and should be investigate in future research.