Abstract :
Cervical cancer is one of the most common malignancies to strike women globally. The awareness and performance of cervical cancer screening among women are essential in the early detection and proper management of cervical cancer cases. This study aimed to assess awareness, practice and barriers of cervical cancer screening among women attending primary health care centers. This study is an analytic cross-sectional stud conducted on 385 women at primary health care centers in Dammam, Khobar, and Qatif during the period December 2023 until March-2024. A self-administered validated Arabic questionnaire was used to collect data about awareness, practice and barriers of cervical cancer screening. Among 385 women, almost two-thirds (64.7%) have heard about cervical cancer screening and most of them (70.6%) knew that it is important to perform cervical cancer screening. Most of respondents (82.3%) had poor overall awareness level. Only 23.1% of the participants had screened for cervical cancer and almost 10% have been screened more than once. The main reported barriers for performing cervical cancer screening were having inadequate information about it, absence of symptoms, lack of advice from treating physicians, lack of knowledge about which center performs the test and feeling afraid to do test. Overall awareness level, marital status, and the barrier feeling afraid of screening were significant predictors of practice (p≤0.05). As a conclusion the overall awareness level about cervical cancer screening was poor, although a significant proportion of participants have heard about cervical cancer screening. The uptake of the cervical cancer screening was low.
