Background: Breast self-examination (BSE) is one of the most feasible methods of screening for early stages of breast cancer. However, the practice rate is insufficient in many low and middle-income countries including Ethiopia. Hence, this study aimed to estimate the pooled prevalence of BSE practice among female university students in Ethiopia.
Methods: PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched for studies that assessed BSE practice among female students in Ethiopian universities. The study included articles published from January 1st, 2010 to June 16th, 2020. The Cochran's Q chi-square and the respective I2 test statistics were used to check heterogeneity among the included studies. To assess publication biases, the funnel plot and Egger's regression tests were employed. Subgroup analysis was done by using different characteristics of studies. Sensitivity analysis was also run to assess the effect of a single study on the pooled outcome. STATA™ Version 14 software packages were employed for data analysis.
Results: Sixteen (n = 16) studies with 5,743 participants were included to estimate the pooled prevalence of BSE practice. The prevalence of regular BSE practice reported in the studies ranges from 0% to 26.4%. The estimated pooled prevalence of regular BSE practice among university students in Ethiopia is 11.23% which is very low. The prevalence of BSE practice was high, 13.6% in studies published before 2015, 12.0% among health science students, and 12.6% in studies with a sample size of 384 participants and above. In addition, the estimated pooled prevalence of irregular self-breast-examination practice was 33.28%.
Conclusion: The rate of BSE practice among female university students is low. Thus, awareness strategies need to be designed to increase the practice rate among women in the country as BSE is one of the most feasible strategies in early detection of breast cancer if properly implemented.
Keywords: Ethiopia; breast self-examination; university students.