Opinions of the Turkish population on cancer and being informed of the diagnosis of cancer

Background/aim: An opinion survey was conducted to investigate the opinions and attitudes of the Turkish population regarding cancer if they or one of their family members were to receive a diagnosis of cancer. Materials and methods: The opinion survey was completed by 6566 subjects and consisted of questions about the demographics of the participants and their overall opinions about cancer. The other points of the investigation asked whether they would inform relatives who had cancer about the diagnosis and whether they would prefer to be informed if they were the one with the cancer diagnosis. Results: The median age of the participants was 33 years (range: 18–100) and 53.3% were male. It was found that 57.7% of the participants would prefer not to disclose a cancer diagnosis to their first-degree relatives. The diagnosis had been disclosed to relatives with cancer in 69.9% of cases. When asked about their overall opinion of cancer management, 76.5% of participants were optimistic, 16.3% were pessimistic, and 2.9% had mixed opinions. Conclusion: This study represents one of the largest surveys done in Turkey to identify the thoughts of healthy people about cancer and their opinion on informing their relatives about the diagnosis if the relatives have cancer. It is comparable with reports from East Europe and Asian countries.