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A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting

Background: HIV infections are generally asymptomatic, leading to undetected infections and late-stage diagnoses. There are a lack of acceptable testing strategies for routine opt-out HIV screening. Our aim was to evaluate and compare the diagnostic yield of routine opt-out HIV testing strategies in...

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Autores principales: Tam, Greta, Wong, Samuel Yeung Shan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8226018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34178923
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.664494
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author Tam, Greta
Wong, Samuel Yeung Shan
author_facet Tam, Greta
Wong, Samuel Yeung Shan
author_sort Tam, Greta
collection PubMed
description Background: HIV infections are generally asymptomatic, leading to undetected infections and late-stage diagnoses. There are a lack of acceptable testing strategies for routine opt-out HIV screening. Our aim was to evaluate and compare the diagnostic yield of routine opt-out HIV testing strategies in two out-patient settings in a low HIV prevalence country: The public primary care and specialist out-patient care setting Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a primary care clinic over a four-week period in 2016 to 2017 and in a specialist out-patient clinic over a concurrent 11-month period. Patients were invited to complete a questionnaire assessing demographic characteristics, acceptance of opt-out HIV testing as a policy in all out-patient clinics in Hong Kong and reasons if refusing the HIV test. All respondents were offered an HIV test. Results: This study included 648 and 1,603 patients in the primary care and specialist out-patient clinic, respectively. Test acceptability was 86 and 87% in the primary care and specialist out-patient setting, respectively. Test uptake was 35 and 68% in the primary care and specialist out-patient setting, respectively. No HIV infections were detected. Conclusion: Opt-out HIV testing during routine blood taking in the specialist out-patient setting achieved a high test uptake and acceptability. In contrast, opt-out HIV testing using rapid finger-prick tests in the primary care setting was not effective.
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spelling pubmed-82260182021-06-26 A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting Tam, Greta Wong, Samuel Yeung Shan Front Public Health Public Health Background: HIV infections are generally asymptomatic, leading to undetected infections and late-stage diagnoses. There are a lack of acceptable testing strategies for routine opt-out HIV screening. Our aim was to evaluate and compare the diagnostic yield of routine opt-out HIV testing strategies in two out-patient settings in a low HIV prevalence country: The public primary care and specialist out-patient care setting Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in a primary care clinic over a four-week period in 2016 to 2017 and in a specialist out-patient clinic over a concurrent 11-month period. Patients were invited to complete a questionnaire assessing demographic characteristics, acceptance of opt-out HIV testing as a policy in all out-patient clinics in Hong Kong and reasons if refusing the HIV test. All respondents were offered an HIV test. Results: This study included 648 and 1,603 patients in the primary care and specialist out-patient clinic, respectively. Test acceptability was 86 and 87% in the primary care and specialist out-patient setting, respectively. Test uptake was 35 and 68% in the primary care and specialist out-patient setting, respectively. No HIV infections were detected. Conclusion: Opt-out HIV testing during routine blood taking in the specialist out-patient setting achieved a high test uptake and acceptability. In contrast, opt-out HIV testing using rapid finger-prick tests in the primary care setting was not effective. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-11 /pmc/articles/PMC8226018/ /pubmed/34178923 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.664494 Text en Copyright © 2021 Tam and Wong. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Tam, Greta
Wong, Samuel Yeung Shan
A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title_full A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title_fullStr A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title_full_unstemmed A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title_short A Cross-Sectional Study Comparing Two Opt-Out HIV Testing Strategies in the Out-Patient Setting
title_sort cross-sectional study comparing two opt-out hiv testing strategies in the out-patient setting
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8226018/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34178923
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.664494
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