Backgrand: The accuracy of subjective risk perception is a
matter of concern in breast cancer development. The objective of
this study was to evaluate the accuracy of self-perceived risk
assessment compared to actual risk.
Methods: The demographic, clinical, and reproductive
characteristics of 800 women aged 35-85 years were collected with
an in-person interview. The self-perceived risk was assessed using
the visual analog scale (VAS) and the actual risk was calculated
from the Gail model. Gail’s cutoff of 1.66% risk was used to
categorize the estimated 5-year actual risk as low/average risk
(<1.66%) and high risk (≥1.66). In low/average risk, if the
self-perceived risk> actual risk, then individuals were
categorized as overestimating. Similarly, in high-risk women, if
the perceived risk<actual risk, then, the subjects were labeled
as under-estimate; otherwise, it was labeled as accurate. The Kappa
statistics were used to determine the agreement between
self-perceived risk and actual risk. ROC analysis was applied to
determine the accuracy of self-perceived risk in the prediction of
actual risk.
Results: The perceived risk was significantly higher than
actual risk (p=0.001, 0.01 for 5-year and lifetime risk
respectively). Both in low and high-risk groups about half of the
women over-estimate and underestimate the risk by subjective risk
perception. For a 5-year risk assessment, there was no agreement at
all between perceived risk and actual risk (Kappa=0.00, p=0.98) but
a very low agreement between them in lifetime risk assessment
(Kappa=0.09, p=0.005). The performance of accuracy of risk
perception versus actual risk was very low (AUC=0.53, 95%CI:
0.44-0.61 and AUC=0.58, 95%CI: 0.54-0.62 for the 5- year risk and
lifetime risk respectively).
Conclusion: The clinical performance of risk perception based
on VAS is very poor. Thus, the efforts of the public health
education program should focus on the correct perception of breast
cancer risk among Iranian women.