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Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: For some common cancers, survival is lower in the UK than in comparable high-income countries. AIM: To assess the effectiveness of a targeted postal intervention (to promote awareness of cancer symptoms and earlier help seeking) on patient consultation rates. DESIGN AND SETTING: A two-ar...

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Autores principales: Laake, Jean-Pierre, Vulkan, Daniel, Quaife, Samantha L, Hamilton, William T, Martins, Tanimola, Waller, Jo, Parmar, Dharmishta, Sasieni, Peter, Duffy, Stephen W
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Royal College of General Practitioners 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8087296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33875418
http://dx.doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713489
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author Laake, Jean-Pierre
Vulkan, Daniel
Quaife, Samantha L
Hamilton, William T
Martins, Tanimola
Waller, Jo
Parmar, Dharmishta
Sasieni, Peter
Duffy, Stephen W
author_facet Laake, Jean-Pierre
Vulkan, Daniel
Quaife, Samantha L
Hamilton, William T
Martins, Tanimola
Waller, Jo
Parmar, Dharmishta
Sasieni, Peter
Duffy, Stephen W
author_sort Laake, Jean-Pierre
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: For some common cancers, survival is lower in the UK than in comparable high-income countries. AIM: To assess the effectiveness of a targeted postal intervention (to promote awareness of cancer symptoms and earlier help seeking) on patient consultation rates. DESIGN AND SETTING: A two-arm randomised controlled trial was carried out on patients aged 50–84 years registered at 23 general practices in rural and urban areas of Greater London, Greater Manchester, and the North East of England. METHOD: Patients who had not had a consultation at their general practice in the previous 12 months and had at least two other risk factors for late presentation with cancer were randomised to intervention and control arms. The intervention consisted of a posted letter and leaflet. Primary outcome was the number of consultations at the practice with patients randomised to each arm in the 6 months subsequent to posting the intervention. All patients with outcome data were included in the intention-to-treat analyses. RESULTS: In total, 1513 patients were individually randomised to the intervention (n = 783) and control (n = 730) arms between Nov 2016 — May 2017; outcome data were available for 749 and 705 patients, respectively, with a statistically significantly higher rate of consultation in the intervention arm compared with the control arm: 436 versus 335 consultations (relative risk 1.40, 95% confidence interval = 1.11 to 1.77, P = 0.004). There was, however, no difference in the numbers of patients consulting. CONCLUSION: Targeted interventions of this nature can change behaviour; there is a need to develop interventions that can be more effective at engaging patients with primary care. This study demonstrates that targeted interventions promoting both awareness of possible cancer symptoms and earlier health seeking, can change behaviour. There is a need to develop and test interventions that can be more effective at engaging the most at-risk patients.
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spelling pubmed-80872962021-05-05 Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial Laake, Jean-Pierre Vulkan, Daniel Quaife, Samantha L Hamilton, William T Martins, Tanimola Waller, Jo Parmar, Dharmishta Sasieni, Peter Duffy, Stephen W Br J Gen Pract Research BACKGROUND: For some common cancers, survival is lower in the UK than in comparable high-income countries. AIM: To assess the effectiveness of a targeted postal intervention (to promote awareness of cancer symptoms and earlier help seeking) on patient consultation rates. DESIGN AND SETTING: A two-arm randomised controlled trial was carried out on patients aged 50–84 years registered at 23 general practices in rural and urban areas of Greater London, Greater Manchester, and the North East of England. METHOD: Patients who had not had a consultation at their general practice in the previous 12 months and had at least two other risk factors for late presentation with cancer were randomised to intervention and control arms. The intervention consisted of a posted letter and leaflet. Primary outcome was the number of consultations at the practice with patients randomised to each arm in the 6 months subsequent to posting the intervention. All patients with outcome data were included in the intention-to-treat analyses. RESULTS: In total, 1513 patients were individually randomised to the intervention (n = 783) and control (n = 730) arms between Nov 2016 — May 2017; outcome data were available for 749 and 705 patients, respectively, with a statistically significantly higher rate of consultation in the intervention arm compared with the control arm: 436 versus 335 consultations (relative risk 1.40, 95% confidence interval = 1.11 to 1.77, P = 0.004). There was, however, no difference in the numbers of patients consulting. CONCLUSION: Targeted interventions of this nature can change behaviour; there is a need to develop interventions that can be more effective at engaging patients with primary care. This study demonstrates that targeted interventions promoting both awareness of possible cancer symptoms and earlier health seeking, can change behaviour. There is a need to develop and test interventions that can be more effective at engaging the most at-risk patients. Royal College of General Practitioners 2020-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8087296/ /pubmed/33875418 http://dx.doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713489 Text en © The Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is Open Access: CC BY 4.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Research
Laake, Jean-Pierre
Vulkan, Daniel
Quaife, Samantha L
Hamilton, William T
Martins, Tanimola
Waller, Jo
Parmar, Dharmishta
Sasieni, Peter
Duffy, Stephen W
Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title_full Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title_fullStr Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title_short Targeted encouragement of GP consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
title_sort targeted encouragement of gp consultations for possible cancer symptoms: a randomised controlled trial
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8087296/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33875418
http://dx.doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713489
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