Recommendations from primary care physicians, family, friends and work colleagues influence patients' decisions related to hepatitis screening, medical examinations and antiviral treatment

Michiaki Okada; Satoshi Oeda; Naoko Katsuki; Shinji Iwane; Yasunori Kawaguchi; Saori Kawamoto; Yoshimi Tomine; Jun Fukuyoshi; Keishiro Maeyama; Hideo Tanaka; Keizo Anzai; Yuichiro Eguchi

doi:10.3892/etm.2020.8533

Recommendations from primary care physicians, family, friends and work colleagues influence patients' decisions related to hepatitis screening, medical examinations and antiviral treatment

Exp Ther Med. 2020 Apr;19(4):2973-2982. doi: 10.3892/etm.2020.8533. Epub 2020 Feb 18.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, Saga-Shi, Saga 849-8501, Japan.
² Liver Center, Saga University Hospital, Saga-Shi, Saga 849-8501, Japan.
³ Department of General Medicine, Saga University Hospital, Saga-Shi, Saga 849-8501, Japan.
⁴ Cancer Scan, Tokyo 141-0031, Japan.
⁵ Division of Epidemiology and Prevention, Aichi Cancer Center, Nagoya, Aichi 464-8681, Japan.
⁶ Department of Epidemiology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Nagoya, Aichi 466-8550, Japan.

Abstract

Identification and screening of patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) is important to prevent liver cancer. Comprehensive antiviral treatments should follow three sequential steps: Hepatitis screening (step 1; examination of HB surface antigen and HCV antibody), medical examination (step 2; examination of HBV-DNA and/or HCV-RNA and performance of abdominal ultrasonography) and antiviral treatment (step 3). Patients who underwent these three steps were studied to determine effective information sources (factors) for raising awareness of comprehensive treatments. A total of 182 patients from 11 medical institutions were who were undergoing antiviral treatment were investigated. The number of patients who accessed each of the 18 information sources in each of the three steps and the percentage of these information sources that directly influenced the participants to make treatment-related decisions were calculated. 'Recommendation from a primary care physician' was the most common information source (64.3, 77.5, and 75.8% at steps 1, 2, and 3, respectively). 'Recommendation from a public health nurse (PHN),' 'recommendation from friends or family,' and 'recommendation from work colleagues' were the next most common human factors (3.3-19.8%). 'Recommendation from a primary care physician' had the greatest influence (76.9, 73.0, and 77.5% at steps 1, 2, and 3, respectively). 'Recommendation from a PHN' (50.0, 26.3 and 64.3%), 'recommendations from friends and family' (58.3, 38.9 and 58.3%), and 'recommendations from work colleagues' (33.3, 33.3 and 42.9%) were highly influential factors. Media such as TV commercial messages and programs also had high recognition, but were not directly influential. The findings of the present study indicated that recommendations from primary care physicians, friends, family and work colleagues influenced patients' decision-making regarding hepatitis screening, examination and treatment.

Keywords: TV commercial message; decision making; enlightenment activity; primary care physician; public health nurse; social factor; viral hepatitis.