Timely reminder interventions to improve annual Papanicolaou (Pap) smear rates among HIV-infected women in an outpatient center of southern Nevada: a short report
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Publication Title
AIDS Care - Psychological and Socio-Medical Aspects of AIDS/HIV
Volume
29
Issue
9
First page number:
1099
Last page number:
1101
Abstract
Current guidelines recommend annual Papanicolaou (Pap) smears for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected women for cervical cancer screening. Rates for such screening in Nevada are below the national rate. Our cohort includes 485 eligible HIV-infected adult women from an outpatient center in Southern Nevada of which only 12 women had obtained a Pap smear in the past year. An intervention was conducted from June 2015 to September 2015, in which reminders to schedule a Pap smear were sent to the remaining cohort of 473 women via sequential text messaging, followed by phone call attempts. Of all subjects, 94% contacted by text messages and 41% contacted by phone calls were successfully reached. There was an increase in the rate of completed Pap smears from 2.5% (12/485) at baseline to 11.8% (56/473) after interventions (p < 0.0001) in a period of three months. Out of the 68 Pap smear results, 20 (29.4%) were abnormal. Our intervention, utilizing methods of communication such as text messaging and phone calls, markedly increased the rate of completed Pap smear screening in our population. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Language
english
Repository Citation
Ganta, V.,
Moonie, S.,
Patel, D.,
Hunt, A. T.,
Richardson, J.,
Di John, D.,
Ezeanolue, E. E.
(2017).
Timely reminder interventions to improve annual Papanicolaou (Pap) smear rates among HIV-infected women in an outpatient center of southern Nevada: a short report.
AIDS Care - Psychological and Socio-Medical Aspects of AIDS/HIV, 29(9),
1099-1101.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09540121.2017.1322677