Abstract
- OBJECTIVE: Cancer is a group of diseases characterized by uncontrolled cell division of abnormal cells that can result in death if not treated well. Cancer is considered to be a leading cause of mortalities throughout the globe and an important barrier to increase life span. This study was conducted to assess awareness among graduates studying in univer-sity of Hail related to cancer.MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is an on-line survey-based study conducted using online tool "Google Forms". The inclusion criteria were that the participants should understand Arabic, must have 18 years or above age and currently living or a permanent resident of Hail city.RESULTS: Total 108 valid responses were in-cluded in this analysis, 56 were male and 52 were female participants. Around 106 of the par-ticipants were Saudi nationals among which 62 were the permanent resident of the Hail city and 46 were migrants which were not the perma-nent resident but moved into the city for the pur-pose of education or business. There was sig-nificant association between awareness level of individuals regarding cancer associated symp-toms including weight loss, fatigue, inflamma-tion and hair loss and common causes of can-cers, including family history, radiation expo-sure, smoking, obesity, aging and fast-food ex-posure. However, there was no significance be-tween awareness of cancer and other factors, including age, gender, marital status, education, nationality, residence and monthly income.CONCLUSIONS: Overall our study reveals that there is significant knowledge among Hail population but still there is a need to increase awareness level of general population to man-age the disease more efficiently.