Research and analysis

GP attendances – symptoms

Updated 25 May 2022

Applies to England

This is one of a series of summaries produced for the campaign, each focusing on a different evaluation measure (referred to as a metric) which reflects a key point in the patient pathway. These metrics should not be considered in isolation. Please refer to the considerations when interpreting these results.

Main finding

There was no clear evidence to suggest the first national ‘Cervical Screening Saves Lives’ campaign had an impact on the number of GP attendances for symptoms associated with cervical cancer.

Background

This metric considers whether the first national ‘Cervical Screening Saves Lives’ campaign had an impact on the number of women visiting a GP with a range of symptoms associated with cervical cancer^{[footnote 1]}. We would expect to see an increase in GP attendances for cervical cancer related symptoms if the campaign had increased general awareness of cervical cancer among women.

Methods

Data on GP attendances for symptoms associated with cervical cancer, and a control symptom (back pain) were sourced from The Health Improvement Network (THIN) database for the period 6 November 2017 to 27 October 2019. The data was grouped into weekly samples and adjusted to account for bank holidays. Information on the number of GP practices submitting data each week (which decreased from 158 to 93 practices over the period considered^{[footnote 2]} was also extracted, to enable the calculation of the average number of attendances per practice per week.

Analysis considered 3 periods: a 12 week pre-campaign period (10 December 2018 to 3 March 2019), a 10 week analysis period (4 March 2019 to 12 May 2019) and a 12 week post-campaign period (13 May 2019 to 4 August 2019). It compared the average number of GP attendances per practice per week during these periods with the same periods one year earlier, in 2017 to 2018.

Results

Considering all ages combined, there were no statistically significant changes in the number of GP attendances for all symptoms associated with cervical cancer. However, among women aged 40 to 49 years, there was a significant 17.9% increase in the number of GP attendances for all symptoms during the analysis period, from 0.33 visits in 2018 to 0.39 in 2019 visits per GP practice per week (p=0.016).

Figure 1 provides the trend in the average number of GP attendances per practice per week for all symptoms associated with cervical cancer. For all ages there was variability in the trend before, during and after the first national ‘Cervical Screening Saves Lives’ campaign. There was a slight increasing trend for women aged 40 to 49 years from week 9 of 2018.

Figure 1: Average number of GP attendances, per practice per week, for symptoms associated with cervical cancer, 6 November 2017 to 27 October 2019, England, All ages combined and women aged 40 to 49.

Results for the control symptom (back pain) showed no significant changes both in the pre-campaign and analysis periods when comparing 2018 and 2019. However, there was a significant decrease (3.4%), from 4.93 visits per GP practice per week in 2018 to 4.76 visits per practice per week in 2019, when considering the post-campaign period (p=0.047).

Conclusions

There appears to have been no change in the number of GP attendances for symptoms associated with cervical cancer for women of all ages.

There was a statistically significant increase in the number of GP attendances for symptoms associated with cervical cancer for women aged 40 to 49 years, however this was in line with the long-term trend.

Get advice on the signs and symptoms of cancer from the NHS website. You can also find out more about the evaluation of Be Clear on Cancer campaigns.

1. These were: abnormal discharge; intermenstrual and postmenopausal bleeding; post-coital bleeding; irregular menstruation; haematuria. ↩

2. Compared to all practices nationally, these practices had a similar age-sex population structure, but a less deprived population on average. ↩