Thibaut Raginel

Les inégalités de participation au dépistage du cancer du col de l’utérus (CCU) sont multifactorielles et la prévention primaire du CCU par la vaccination contre les papillomavirus humains (HPV) oncogènes pourrait présenter des similarités. Médecin de premier recours de l’ensemble de la population, le médecin généraliste (MG) pourrait avoir une place importante dans la limitation de ces inégalités et nous voulions l’explorer avant l’implémentation du dépistage organisé national français (DONF) du CCU.La comparaison des données de remboursement de deux départements français dont l’un participait à l’expérimentation de dépistage organisé, a mis en évidence une participation au dépistage plus importante dans le département d’expérimentation. Le gradient de participation diminuant avec l’augmentation du niveau de défavorisation était plus fort dans le département d’expérimentation, et plus encore en milieu rural. Nos données ne nous ont pas permis d’explorer ces aspects pour la vaccination contre les HPV.Interrogés sur leurs préférences pour limiter ces inégalités dans le cadre du DONF, gynécologues et MG étaient favorables au ciblage des femmes non dépistées, par invitations centralisées impliquant le médecin traitant déclaré ou en leur fournissant la liste des femmes non dépistées de leur patientèle. Le ciblage des femmes de plus de 50 ans ou défavorisées, de même que les autoprélèvements de dépistage des HPV, étaient rejetés par les praticiens.L’ensemble de nos travaux confirmaient l’importance d’un universalisme proportionné lors de l’implémentation du DONF. L’adhésion des praticiens, dont les MG, nécessitera une information sur la motivation des mesures proposées.

Background: Cervical cancer screening is effective in reducing mortality due to uterine cervical cancer (UCC). However, inequalities in participation in UCC screening exist, especially according to age and social status. Considering the current situation in France regarding the ongoing organized UCC screening campaign, we aimed to assess general practitioners’ (GPs) and gynaecologists’ preferences for actions designed to reduce screening inequalities. Methods: French physicians’ preferences to UCC screening modalities was assessed using a discrete choice experiment. A national cross-sectional questionnaire was sent between September and October 2014 to 500 randomly selected physicians, and numerically to all targeted physicians working in the French region Midi-Pyrénées. Practitioners were offered 11 binary choices of organized screening scenarios in order to reduce inequalities in UCC screening participation. Each scenario was based on five attributes corresponding to five ways to enhance participation in UCC screening while reducing screening inequalities. Results: Among the 123 respondents included, practitioners voted for additional interventions targeting non-screened women overall (p < 0.05), including centralized invitations sent from a central authority and involving the mentioned attending physician, or providing attending physicians with the lists of unscreened women among their patients. However, they rejected the specific targeting of women over 50 years old (p < 0.01) or living in deprived areas (p < 0.05). Only GPs were in favour of allowing nurses to perform Pap smears, but both GPs and gynaecologists rejected self-collected oncogenic papillomavirus testing. Conclusions: French practitioners tended to value the traditional principle of universalism. As well as rejecting self-collected oncogenic papillomavirus testing, their reluctance to support the principle of proportionate universalism relying on additional interventions addressing differences in socioeconomic status needs further evaluation. As these two concepts have already been recommended as secondary development leads for the French national organized screening campaign currently being implemented, the adherence of practitioners and the adaptation of these concepts are necessary conditions for reducing inequalities in health care.

Cervical cancer screening rates are known to be strongly associated with socioeconomic status. Our objective was to assess whether the rate is also associated with an aggregated deprivation marker, defined by the location of family doctors’ offices. To access this association, we 1) collected data from the claim database of the French Health Insurance Fund about the registered family doctors and their enlisted female patients eligible for cervical screening; 2) carried out a telephone survey with all registered doctors to establish if they were carrying out Pap-smears in their practices; 3) geotracked all the doctors’ offices in the smallest existing blocks of socioeconomic homogenous populations (IRIS census units) that were assigned a census derived marker of deprivation, the European Deprivation Index (EDI), and a binary variable of urbanization; and 4) we used a multivariable linear mixed model with IRIS as a random effect. Of 348 eligible doctors, 343 responded to the telephone survey (98.6%) and were included in the analysis, encompassing 88,152 female enlisted patients aged 25–65 years old. In the multivariable analysis (adjusted by the gender of the family doctor, the practice of Pap-smears by the doctor and the urbanization of the office location), the EDI of the doctor’s office was strongly associated with the cervical cancer screening participation rate of eligible patients (p<0.001). The EDI linked to the location of the family doctor’s office seems to be a robust marker to predict female patients’ participation in cervical cancer screening.

Some of the inequality in uterine cervical cancer (UCC) screening uptake are due to the socioeconomic deprivation of women. A national organized screening programme has proven to be effective in increasing the uptake, but may increase socioeconomic inequality. Therefore, we compared inequality in uptake of UCC screening between two French departments, one of which is experimenting an organized screening programme. We used reimbursement data from the main French health insurance scheme to compare screening rates in the municipalities of the two departments over a three-year period. The experimental department had higher screening rates, but the increase in deprivation in municipalities had a greater effect on the decrease in participation in this department. Moreover, while screening rates were higher in urban areas, the negative effect of deprivation on participation was greater in rural areas. Although these departments were compared at the same time under different conditions, socioeconomic inequality between them may have been greater before the experimentation started. However, screening may have led to an increase in socioeconomic inequality between women screened. Special attention must be paid to changes in socioeconomic and geographic inequality in the uptake of UCC screening when the programme is rolled out nationally.

Objective: Reliable data about general practitioners performing pap-tests are insufficient. A claim code for the achievement of pap-smears exists in France, but its use by general practitioners is not known. The main purpose of this study was to highlight independent factors associated with the achievement of pap-smears by the general practitioner (GP). We carried out a descriptive and analytic epidemiologic study in 347 GPs and their 244,889 patients, registered at the Health Care Insurance Fund of Flanders. The European Deprivation Index (EDI) in the area of GP’s surgeries was specified. All GPs were questioned by telephone about their performance of pap-tests. The claim database of the insurance fund was analyzed to describe characteristics of GPs. Results: The answer rate among questioned GPs was 98.8%. Pap-smears were performed in their surgeries by 182 GPs (53.1%). Among males, 45.7% performed pap-smears versus 78.4% of the female (adjusted odds-ratio = 4.5, p < 0.001). The mean rate of screened women in the target population was 44% when GPs were performing smears versus 42% when they were not (adjusted odds-ratio = 1.04, p = 0.03). Only 19.5% of GPs used the claim code. The number of patients, and the EDI were not associated with pap-smears. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02749110 (April 22, 2016)

The aim of this study was to compare the seasonal variation in performance of a faecal immunochemical test for haemoglobin (FIT) and a guaiac test (gFOBT) for colorectal cancer screening. From June 2009 to May 2011, 18,290 screening participants (50–74 years old) performed OC‐SENSOR quantitative FIT (1 sample) and Hemoccult II gFOBT (3 stool samples with 2 spots/sample). Referral for colonoscopy required a minimum of one positive spot (gFOBT), or a positive FIT [cut‐off 150 ng haemoglobin/mL buffer (i.e. 30 μg haemoglobin/g feces)]. The performance of tests for detection of advanced neoplasia was compared according to seasons using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curves, at various FIT cut‐off values. The positivity rate of FIT was significantly lower in the summer compared with other seasons (2.3% versus 3.0%, p = 0.03), whilst the positivity rate of gFOBT increased in the autumn (1.8% versus 1.5%, p = 0.11). FIT was clinically more effective than gFOBT over the four season‐specific ROC curves. At the cut‐off concentration used in the study, the season‐specific FIT/gFOBT ratios for true positive rates were: 2.8 (Autumn), 2.5 (Winter), 3.0 (Spring), 3.7 (Summer), and for false positive rates: 1.2 (Autumn), 1.5 (Winter), 1.8 (Spring), 0.9 (Summer). Therefore, in this study with this cut‐off concentration and in spite of lower positivity rate in summer, the seasonal variations of performance of OC‐SENSOR FIT led to improved gain in specificity in the summer, without a decrease in gain in sensitivity compared with gFOBT.