Knowledge level and prevetive strategies on penile cancer in health area degree students

Abstract

Penile cancer, although considered rare in developed countries, presents relevant incidence rates in Brazil. The increase in neoplasias in the male population is due to the adjustment of multiple factors, some of them environmental, genetic and lifestyle, such as smoking, sedentary lifestyle, poor diet, obesity, alcoholism, resulting from exposure to infectious agents, without condoms and with multiple partners.1,2 This amount of factors increases the risk of development of certain types of cancer, and the single reduction of only one of them may be limited to cover the effectiveness of precautionary actions.2 Amidst the clinical forms of cancers that often affect the male population, I emphasize penile cancer. An uncommon neoplasm in developed countries, unlike what occurs in regions of low socioeconomic class, as in most of the Brazilian Northeast.3 In Brazil, penile carcinoma is the fourth most common type of male cancer in the North and Northeast, simultaneously 5.7 and 5.3%; in the CenterWest region takes eighth place and in the South and Southeast regions and occupies the top ten male neoplasms.4