Knowledge Regarding Lung Cancer among Adults at Selected Community of Ratnanagar, Chitwan

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer is the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cell in one or both lungs Lung cancer is the 2nd most common cancer worldwide. It is the most common cancer in men and the 2nd most common cancer in women.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study on “Knowledge regarding Lung Cancer among Adults at Selected Community of Ratnanagar, Chitwan” was carried out to find the level of knowledge regarding lung cancer. Non-probability purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample and the sample size was 101. Data was collected by using semi-structured interview guide. The collected data was entered in SPSS version 22 and analysis was done using descriptive statistics.
Results: Findings of the study reveal that among 101 respondents, 58.4% were in the age group of 19-39. Similarly, majority (82.2%) were female. Most of the respondents (92.1%) were Hinduism. Likewise, 64.4% were Janajati. And more than half of the respondents (58.4%) were literate. Majority (74.3%) of the respondents were non-smokers. The study findings summarized the level of knowledge into three categories where nearly half (47.5%) of the respondents had moderate knowledge of lung cancer. Whereas 29.7% had good knowledge and 22.8% had poor knowledge about lung cancer.
Conclusions: This study concludes that, though majority of the respondents had moderate and good level of knowledge regarding lung cancer but there is still knowledge gap in some risk factors such as exposure to asbestos and radon gas. So, awareness programmes on lung cancer should be planned and implemented from concerned authority in community setting so that incidence of lung cancers can be reduced to some extent.