Socio-Demographic Correlates of Participation in Mammography: A Survey among Women Aged between 35-69 in Tehran, Iran

Background: The rates of breast cancer have increased over the past two decades, and this raises concernabout physical, psychological and social well-being of women with breast cancer. Further, few women reallywant to do breast cancer screening. We here investigated the socio-demographic correlates of mammographyparticipation among 400 asymptomatic Iranian women aged between 35 and 69.
Methods: A cross-sectionalsurvey was conducted at the four outpatient clinics of general hospitals in Tehran during the period fromJuly through October, 2009. Bi-variate analyses and multi-variate binary logistic regression were employed tofind the socio-demographic predictors of mammography utilization among participants.
Results: The rate ofmammography participation was 21.5% and relatively high because of access to general hospital services. Morewomen who had undergone mammography were graduates from university or college, had full-time or parttimeemployment, were insured whether public or private, reported a positive family history of breast cancer,and were in the middle income level (all P <0.01).The largest number of participating women was in the agerange of 41 to 50 years. The results of multivariate logistic regression further showed that education (95%CI:0.131-0.622), monthly income (95%CI: 0.038-0.945), and family history of breast cancer (95%CI: 1.97-9.28) weresignificantly associated (all P <0.05) with mammography participation.
Conclusions: The most important issuefor a successful screening program is participation. Using a random sample, this study found that the potentialpredictor variables of mammography participation included a higher education level, a middle income level, anda positive family history of breast cancer for Iranian women, after adjusting for all other demographic variablesin the model.