Abstract

Objectives: To stratify patients into various stages, calculate average patient delay and study various causes of delay to presentation.
Methodology: This was a one year hospital based cross sectional study at Khyber Teaching Hospital, using non probability consecutive sampling. A simplified staging was used for this study; Early (Stage I), Intermediate (Stage II, III), and Late (Stage IV). A patient was labelled “delay” when >3 months had elapsed between first symptom perception and first doctor consultation.
Results: 80 patients were included with age 21-80 years (mean 45.28±13.15). 80% of the patients were married, 76.3% (n=61/80) were poor with annual income of 3 months. Most common cause of delay was false symptom interpretation in 25.3% (n=17) patients.
Conclusion: Late clinical presentation is because of lack of health education, unawareness, misconceptions about treatment and strong belief in traditional medicine resulting in advanced disease. This is worsened by poverty and unavailability of health care services especially in rural areas.

Key words: Breast Cancer, patient delay, late stage