Journal
BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER
Volume 116, Issue 11, Pages 1408-1414Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/bjc.2017.117
Keywords
colorectal; cancer screening; randomised controlled trial; reminder; uptake; text-message
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Funding
- London North West Healthcare NHS Trust
- Cancer Research UK programme [C1418/A14134]
- Cancer Research UK [15953] Funding Source: researchfish
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Background: We investigated the effectiveness of a text-message reminder to improve uptake of the English Bowel Cancer Screening programme in London. Methods: We performed a randomised controlled trial across 141 general practices in London. Eight thousand two hundred sixty-nine screening-eligible adults (aged 60-74 years) were randomised in a 1 : 1 ratio to receive either a text-message reminder (n = 4134) or no text-message reminder (n = 4135) if they had not returned their faecal occult blood test kit within 8 weeks of initial invitation. The primary outcome was the proportion of adults returning a test kit at the end of an 18-week screening episode (intention-to-treat analysis). A subgroup analysis was conducted for individuals receiving an invitation for the first time. Results: Uptake was 39.9% in the control group and 40.5% in the intervention group. Uptake did not differ significantly between groups for the whole study population of older adults (adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.94-1.12; P = 0.56) but did vary between the groups for first-time invitees (uptake was 34.9% in the control and 40.5% in the intervention; adjusted OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.04-1.58; P = 0.02). Conclusions: Although text-message reminders did not significantly increase uptake of the overall population, the improvement among first-time invitees is encouraging.
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