Recruitment of women by GPs for pap tests: a meta-analysis

General practitioners (GPs) have a pivotal role to play in recruiting women for Pap tests. In recent times, considerable attention has been paid to the role of reminder systems in encouraging women to have regular Pap tests. Although a number of studies have investigated the effectiveness of reminder systems, there has been no comprehensive review. This paper aims to determine the effectiveness of patient and GP reminders in increasing the proportion of women screened for cervical cancer. Two electronic databases were searched for English-language randomized controlled trials conducted in a general practice or family medicine setting, and examining the effectiveness of GP and patient reminders in increasing the proportion of women screened for cervical cancer. Ten trials were identified, and meta-analytic techniques were employed to analyse the data from these trials. The women whose GPs had been prompted to remind them to have a Pap test were significantly more likely to do so than were control women (typical risk difference (TRD) = 6.6%, 95% CI = 5.2%-8.0%). The typical risk difference for the patient reminder studies was 4.9% (95% CI = 2.6%-7.2%). In both cases, sensitivity analysis revealed that one study stood out as an exceptional result. The omission of this study induced homogeneity among the remaining studies. Once this study was removed, the TRDs for the GP reminder and patient reminder studies were 7.9% (95% CI = 6.5%-9.4%) and 10.8% (95% CI = 8.1%-13.6%), respectively. The results strongly suggest that GPs should make use of GP and patient reminder systems.