Barriers and influencing factors of opportunistic screening for cervical cancer among urban women

Objective To investigate the willingness to accept opportunistic screening for cervical cancer and its influencing factors among urban women in Chongqing city for promoting cervical cancer screening.Methods A questionnaire survey about the acceptance to receive cervical cancer opportunistic screening was conducted among gynecological disease and gynecological oncology clinic attendees randomly selected at 8 hospitals in Chongqing city during January 2009 to March 2015.Results A total of 11 965 valid questionnaires were collected and the response rate of the survey was 98.9%.Of all the eligible respondents,16.77% were unwilling to accept cervical cancer opportunistic screening."Having no symptoms/discomforts","being unwilling or afraid of gynecological examination",and "not knowing the significance of cervical cancer screening" were the top three reasons for refusing to have cervical cancer opportunistic screening,with the ratios of 44.44%,30.39% and 10.71%,respectively.The results of multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the women at younger age and with relatively lower education were more likely to refuse cervical cancer screening compared to the women without these characteristics;the women being unemployed,without childbearing history or having delivery of 3 times or more,not having heard about cervical cancer screening,and not knowing the purpose of cervical cancer screening had significantly higher odds ratio for not receiving cervical cancer screening.Conclusion Deficit in health consciousness is a main barrier for urban women to accept cervical cancer screening in Chongqing city,suggesting that education on cervical cancer screening needs to be promoted among the population,particularly among the women of young age,with low education,being unemployed,without childbearing history,and having little knowledge of incident and screening of cervical cancer.