Knowledge and Practice of Iranians Toward Colorectal Cancer, and Barriers to Screening

Background: colorectal cancer (crc) is the third most commonmalignancy in iran. limited data are available on knowledge andbarriers in regard to crc and screening tests in iran. the aimof the study was to characterize knowledge, practice, and barrierstoward crc and its screening tests among an iranian at?riskpopulation.methods: this cross?sectional study was conducted withparticipation of 200 individuals of both genders aged 50 years orolder in a teaching hospital in tehran, iran. data were collected viaface?to?face interviews. a questionnaire containing demographics;knowledge about crc and screening tests; screening practice; andreasons for not being screened was administered. the reliabilityalpha for knowledge items was 0.52.results: the age of the participants ranged from 50 to 83 years(mean 60.13). overall, 11% of the respondents reported priorscreening by either fecal occult blood test (6.5%) or colonoscopy(4.5%). the majority of individuals had poor knowledge althoughrespondents with prior screening obtained slightly higher scorein comparison with nonparticipants in screening (26.74 vs. 23.24;p < 0.05). four commonly cited reasons for not having crc testswere “doctor did not recommend the test,” “did not think it wasneeded,” “never think of the test,” and “no symptoms/problems”which were reported by 29%, 26%, 20%, and 17% of theparticipants, respectively.conclusion: it is necessary to design appropriate educationalinterventions to increase the general population’s knowledge aboutcrc and screening before implementing preventive programs iniran.