OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to investigate the factors causing a delay in the definitive treatment of histologically-confirmed breast cancer patients seen at the Breast Center of Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC). It is also aimed to describe the dissimilarity of patients who were treated early and those patients whose treatment were delayed beyond 1 month, in terms of demographic, economic, clinical factors and cultural factors.

METHODS: A survey of all histologically- confirmed breast cancer female patients seen at the Breast Cancer of VSMMC from December 2008 to May 2009 were evaluated in terms of demographic, economic, clinical and cultural factors. Statistical analysis using t-test and chi-square were used to determine factors associated with delayed treatment.

RESULTS: The mean age all patients was 50.73 = 1.34. The mean age (54.5 = 2.15) of patients under early treatment group was significantly older compared to the mean age (48.9 = 1.64) of patients in the delayed treatment group (t-test), P-value < 0.05. Significant proportions of married respondents (31/45 = 68.9%) belonged to the delayed treatment group. Fifty-five percent of patients belonged to the delayed treatment group had locally advanced breast cancer, 50 percent were in Stage 3B and 5.3 percent were in stage 3C.

CONCLUSION: In this study, 68 percent of the participants who had been diagnosed to have histopathologically- confirmed breast cancer had delayed consultation. Being married, living within the metropolitan area, educational attainment are significant factors that delayed treatment as well as the fear of treatment and consultation to traditional healers.

.

The degree of bacterial contamination remains a major determinant in the development of surgical site infections (SSI), which continue to be a leading cause of morbidity among surgical patients. For this reason, we performed a prospective survey on the relative frequency of surgical site infections based on bacterial contamination categories. Of the 774 operations in our department over a six-month period from January 1 to July 31, 1989, the overall surgical site infection rate was 7.8% with specific surgical site infection rates of 2.5%, 5.8%, 14.7% and 16.9% on clean, clean-contaminated, contaminated and dirty operations respectively. A comparison with published acceptable surgical wound infection rates among the different bacterial contamination categories showed comparable results except for contaminated cases (p = 0.0376). Deep incisional SSI tended to be higher among dirty operations with a risk eight times higher compared with clean operations.

The use of prophylactic antibiotics was also noted as they were practiced by the different surgeons, without specific guidelines as to their use. An in-depth study is needed to determine the effects of antibiotic prophylaxis on surgical site infection rate.

Human ; Male ; Female ; Antibiotic Prophylaxis ; Surgical Wound Infection ; Surgeons ; Morbidity ; Risk ; Surveys And Questionnaires ; Anti-bacterial Agents