Swiss women show, together with women from the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, England and Germany, a very high incidence of breast cancer in Europe. Whilst the evidence for primary cancer prevention is slowly growing, its strategies can not yet be implemented in clinical prevention programmes. Therefore, secondary prevention, early detection of cancer, remains the main focus for reducing breast cancer mortality. This is especially true because of the proven relationship between mortality and size of the primary tumour as well as the status of the axilla. Despite these facts, in contrast to the French part of Switzerland, breast cancer screening has not yet been implemented in the German and Italian part of Switzerland. METHODS: It was the aim of this study to identify prevention measures used by women living in the German-, Italian- and French-speaking part of Switzerland and to explore their attitude towards breast cancer prevention measures. It was asked what these women knew about breast cancer prevention, what type of secondary prevention they used and who motivated them to do so. The investigation included 1721 women from three language regions of Switzerland. Data were collected with a postal survey questionnaire. Descriptive, uni- and multivariate methods were used for data analysis. RESULTS: The response rate was 34%. Statistically significant differences in breast self-examination were observed between the three regions (p =