RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Patient and disease characteristics associated with late tumour stage at presentation of cervical cancer in northwestern Tanzania Ramadhani Mlange 1 , Dismas Matovelo 1* , Peter Rambau 2 and Benson Kidenya 3 Abstract Background: About two thirds of patients with cervical cancer in Tanzania present with advanced tumor stage, leading to significant morbidity and mortality. We designed a study to determine the factors associated with the late tumour stage at presentation among patients with cervical cancer in Mwanza. Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited women at Bugando Medical Centre (BMC) with histologically confirmed cervical cancer from November 2013 to April 2014. Patients were recruited serially until the sample size was reached. Results: A total of 202 women with histologically confirmed cervical cancer were recruited. The mean age of the patients was 50.5 ± 13.3 years. The majority of patients (n = 129, 63.9 %) were diagnosed with late stage disease (IIB-IVB). Patients also presented with severe anemia (n = 78, 38.6 %), urinary tract infections (n = 74, 36.6 %), hydronephrosis (n = 43, 21.2 %), elevated serum creatinine levels (n = 33, 16.3 %), vesicovaginal fistula (VVF), (n = 13, 6.4 %), lung metastasis (n = 5, 2.4 %), metastasis to the urinary bladder (n = 4, 1.9 %), rectovaginal fistula (RVF) (n = 3, 1.4 %), liver metastasis (n = 2, 0.9 %) and hydroureter (n = 2, 0.9 %). In multivariate logistic regression, factors associated with late stage at presentation were attending to alternative health practitioners and lack of personal initiative to seek care to formal health facilities (OR 2.3; 95 % CI 1.2–4.2, p = 0.011 and OR 2.0; 95 % CI 1.0–3.8, p = 0.028) respectively. Conclusion: Communities should be sensitized to women’s empowerment, provide community education on early symptoms of cervical cancer, and the importance of early hospital attendance. Keywords: Cervical cancer, Late presentation, Advanced stage, Mwanza Background Cervical cancer is the fourth common cancer among women worldwide with nearly 529,000 incident cases and 275,000 deaths each year [1]. More than 85 % of these cases occur in developing countries due lack of implementation campaigns aimed at cancer prevention, such as screening for early detection and vaccination for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection [1]. The highest burden of cervical cancer-related deaths occur in developing countries and it is the leading cause of gynecological cancer-related deaths among women in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central America and South-Central Asia [2]. In Tanzania, approximately 3,000 new cervical cancer patients are seen at Ocean Road Cancer Institute per year and 47 % of these patients present with ad- vanced stage disease [3]. At Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), 400 patients with cervical cancer are seen per annum [4]. Patients who present with advanced stage disease are more likely to develop complications such as anemia, ureteric obstruction with hydroureter and hydronephrosis, renal failure and urinary tract infection [5, 6]. Cervical * Correspondence: magonza77@yahoo.co.uk 1 Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Catholic University of Health & Allied Sciences, P.O. BOX 1464, Mwanza, Tanzania Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2016 Mlange et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Mlange et al. BMC Women's Health (2016) 16:5 DOI 10.1186/s12905-016-0285-7