Web-based info might not boost cancer screening



By Kerry Grens

NEW YORK |
Wed Dec 26, 2012 2:51pm EST


NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Offering women information on colon cancer screening around a web does not get them to take adult screening any some-more effectively than printed materials, according to a new study.

“It’s unsatisfactory that a web didn’t have some-more effect,” pronounced Dr. David Weinberg of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, a report’s lead author.

Although a U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that adults between ages 50 and 75 get screened frequently for colorectal cancer, about 40 percent of people don’t follow those guidelines.

To lift recognition of a recommendations and inspire people to go get screened, researchers have grown a accumulation of approaches, Weinberg said, including videos and printed materials. But zero of these “have been tremendously successful,” he added.

Dr. Hamant Roy, executive of gastroenterology investigate during NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, pronounced one process that has been shown to be effective is simply carrying doctors spend time with their patients to speak about a cancer tests.

“But one of a issues is they have to see some-more and some-more people with reduction and reduction time, so it gets unequivocally tough to have these discussions with patients,” pronounced Roy, who was not concerned in a new study.

To see either a web competence yield an simply permitted and inexpensive choice for removing people to approve with screening recommendations, Weinberg and his colleagues asked 865 women who were entrance in for slight gynecology appointments to attend in a study.

Of those, 171 saw their alloy as normal, 349 also perceived printed materials about colon cancer screening during a time of their revisit and 345 were offering entrance to a web site that contained a same information as a printed matter.

Included in a materials was information about a advantages of screening and harms of going unscreened, as good as credentials on a several forms of colon cancer shade available: a sofa exam once a year, a sigmoidoscopy each 5 years or a colonoscopy each 10 years.

All a women were authorised to get screened for colon cancer formed on their age and health status.

Four months after a alloy visit, however, roughly 12 percent of a women – regardless of either they perceived a additional information or not – had gotten a colon cancer screen.

Roy called a numbers “dismal.”

“At a finish of a day, something is improved than nothing,” he said, though compared to screening rates for breast cancer, a uptake for colorectal cancer screening was utterly low.

Among a women in a study, published in a Archives of Internal Medicine, 73 percent had perceived a mammogram in a past year.

On a other hand, Weinberg said, “you competence disagree their appearance in a investigate did conduct to lift their seductiveness turn enough” to get screened.

Not enough, however, to get many of a women to even entrance a website Weinberg’s organisation had developed.

Only 24 percent had logged on, according to a researchers’ records, and only 16 percent of a women remembered going to a website.

Weinberg still thinks there competence be ways that a web could be helpful.

“I consider that a web has good promise…the doubt is, how do we get people to demeanour during it in a initial place?” he said.

Perhaps following adult with people to ask them about their knowledge on a website competence urge their participation, he suggested.

Roy concluded that it would be beforehand to toss out a web as a intensity apparatus for augmenting screening rates.

“It seems like a appetite to get people over a mound to get colorectal screening is aloft than simply passively going to a website. we consider a website is maybe helpful, though there needs to be some-more assistance to get them over a edge,” he said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/VizaRR Archives of Internal Medicine, online Dec 17, 2012.

Source: Health Medicine Network