Effect of Fee on Attendance in Cervical Cancer Screening

Göteborg University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Cervical Dysplasia

Treatments: Other: Screening without fee

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02378324

ScreenFee

Details and patient eligibility

About

Several reasons can explain non-attendance in cervical cancer screening. In low resource settings the attendance is even lower. The effect of fee as contributing reason of non attendance has not been studied before why the investigators decided to study this in a low resource setting as a randomised trial.

Full description

Non-attendance in the cervical cancer screening programme is the most important factors why Swedish women contract the disease. Low attendance rate is observed in districts with low socioeconomic resources. Several reasons can explain this, including the existence of a fee. A low attendance rate in low resource districts is also noticed in Gothenburg, Sweden. After multiple interventions the coverage has slightly increased. None of the interventions included the aspect of the fee. The investigators decided to study the effect of fee abolishment in a randomized control trial emanating from the regular cervical cancer-screening program. Method: Randomized Control Trial (RCT). Women in low resource areas of Gothenburg, due for screening, January-July 2013, were randomised to receive an offer of a free test or receiving the regular invitation stating the regular fee of 100 Swedish kronor (SEK) (≈11 €). Power calculation has shown 80 % power to detect an increase in participation of 20% at 1972 participants.

Enrollment: 3,124 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 23 to 60 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All women in the designated geographical area, consecutively enrolled in planned screening according to standard routine. I.e women are invited if they are between 23 and 60 years of age and don't have a pap smear registered the last three or five years according to age.

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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3,124 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention and control

Active Comparator group

Description:

Intervention arm: screening without fee.

Treatment:

Other: Screening without fee

Control group

No Intervention group

Description:

Control arm: screening with the regular fee, 100SEK.