Purpose: Cervical cancer screening reduces the incidence and specific mortality rate of cervical neoplasms. In most cases screening by means of Pap smears is performed in France by gynecologists. The primary objective of this study was to confirm whether the participation rate is increased when general practitioners (GPs) carry out the smears themselves. The secondary objective was to evaluate other independent characteristics of GPs predicting participation rates in women.
Methods: The population of 347 GPs, including their relevant characteristics and their 90,094 female patients eligible for screening over 2 years (2013-2014), was derived from the SIAM claim database of the Flanders Healthcare Insurance Fund (CPAM). A telephone survey among all GPs was carried out to know whether they were performing smears in their surgeries.
Results: A total of 343 GPs were included for analysis (98.8% participation rate). The mean cervical cancer screening participation rate over 2 years among all the women in the recommended age group (25-65 years) was 43.3% (±6.9). Bivariate analysis showed that participation rate was higher when the GP performed smears (adjusted difference of mean: 2.06 [95% CI: 0.67-3.45], p = 0.037) and whether the GP was female (2.08 [0.42-3.74], p = 0.0144). After multivariate analysis the only significant characteristic of the GP was the performance of smears (1.71 [0.27-3.16], p = 0.0204).
Conclusions: Cervical smears performed by GPs led to increased screening participation rates within the recommended age group of women. However, the size of this increase is insufficient to reach the expected participation rates.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02749110.
Keywords: Papanicolaou test; general practitioners; mass screening; physician's family; primary healthcare; uterine cervical neoplasms.