BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women and the second most common illness overall. It is the most prevalent illness in women globally and the leading factor in cancer-related disability and mortality in women. The morbidity and mortality linked to breast cancer can be decreased with an early diagnosis and timely treatment. Early diagnosis can improve case management, lessen patient worry in benign instances, and lower morbidity and death.

OBJECTIVE: The present study was conducted to evaluate the frequency of breast carcinoma and its associated factors among patients presenting with palpable breast mass.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive cross sectional study was carried out at the surgical department, CMC-H Larkana. 124 women with palpable breast lumps and within the age bracket of 25 to 49 were included in the study for the research using a non-probability consecutive sampling. Statistical package for social science (SPSS version 23) was used for data analysis. For quantitative and qualitative variables we used the descriptive statistics and frequency/percentages. To evaluate the strength of association among variables, we employed the Chi Square Test of association.

RESULTS: FNAC report revealed that nearly 1/4th (24.19%) of the study subjects had malignant, most (71.77%) of the women had benign and 5(4.03%) females had inflammatory lesions. Most of the women (62.90%) were aged 36-49 years. The duration of lump was 1-3 months in 72(58.06%) cases and 4-6 months in 52(41.94%) cases. Half of the women presented with lump in the left breast, only 5(4.03%) females had bilateral involvement of breast. while 35(28.23%) cases had lump size > 5 cm. Evidently lump size had significant association breast carcinoma with p-value 0.006

CONCLUSION: It was evident from the findings of the study that females presenting with larger lump size and longer duration have higher odds of being malignancy. The women at the study setting, likewise the rest of the women in the country are unaware of self-care in order to detect the lump size at early stage and present to the hospital within shortest possible duration.

KEY WORDS: Breast cancer, carcinoma, Lump, Pakistan