Study: Anxiety Over Outcome May Keep Women From Performing Breast Self-Exam

Women who are fearful of what they may find from a breast self-exam may be less likely to perform one, according to researchers at UCLA.

The women may be afraid of being alone if and when they find a lump, according to the study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Researchers recruited 430 women at a higher risk of developing breast cancer for the study and found while they were anxious about all screening tests, their anxiety was highest for the breast self-exam.

The breast self-exam was the only test where compliance was low enough to suggest that anxiety may be a barrier to this method of screening.

Researchers found that 79 percent of the women had regular mammograms, 89 percent had regular Pap smears, but only 34 percent performed regular breast self-exams.

"Potentially finding disturbing information while alone sets off anxiety that makes this procedure too threatening. This is particularly true for those women that see themselves as more vulnerable to breast cancer," wrote the authors of the study.

"It may be unrealistic and potentially traumatic to direct women with very high self-appraised risk for breast cancer to perform breast self-examinations," said the authors.

Other Sources: UCLA