Abstract:

Nowadays, cancer remains a serious disease, associated with heavy treatment costs and long-term sequelae that represent high costs of care. However, earlier diagnosis means better chances of cure and less extensive treatment. This work highlights the socio-demographic and medical factors of patients with breast cancer admitted into the ‘reproductive health referral center’ RHRC of Tétouan, and their impact on the various waiting-times, from onset of symptoms to access to histological diagnosis. This is a retrospective descriptive study conducted on the breast cancer in the RHRC of Tétouan. We used accessible data from 81 women with breast cancer on registers, ranging from 46 women in 2017 to 35 women in the first half of 2018. In this study, the average consultation time is 260±345 days. As for the patients, 21% were between 18 and 39 years old, almost half 46.9% had a very low socioeconomic level and almost 33.3% were illiterate. Delay attributable to the patient or the health system delays diagnosis. Patient socioeconomic level was significantly (p=0.004) associated with health system delay, and education was significantly associated with consultation delay (p=0.020) and total time to diagnosis (p=0.026). To improve the quality of access to breast cancer care, it is necessary to make more efforts by adopting a policy whose main actions tend to minimize the factors which accentuate the length of these delays and instill health education in the Moroccan teaching curriculum in order to increase the level of literacy among Moroccan citizens.