8. Informing women about their results
To inform women who have negative screening result, the ECIBC's Guidelines Development Group (GDG) suggests:
- using a letter (conditional recommendation, very low certainty of the evidence)
- not using a phone call (conditional recommendation, very low quality of the evidence)
- not using a face to face interview (conditional recommendation, very low certainty of the evidence)
Negative result: letter vs. nothing
Issued on: June 2018
Healthcare question
Should a letter vs. nothing be used for informing women who have a negative screening result?
Recommendation
The ECIBC's Guidelines Development Group (GDG) suggests using a letter for informing women who have a negative screening result.
Recommendation strength
| Conditional recommendation |
| Very low certainty of the evidence |
Justification
The GDG made a conditional recommendation for the intervention, based on the moderate costs, the probably increased equity and the judgement that the intervention was probably acceptable to key stakeholders and feasible to implement. It did not make a strong recommendation because the studies are too indirect and no comparisons of optimal strategies were provided.
Considerations for implementation and policy making
- The GDG noted that, as evidence coming from the EU Screening Programmes' survey suggests, some countries do not communicate negative results (positive results are followed up anyways), in these cases it needs to be made clear in the invitation letter that no follow up/letter means a negative result.
- In case of return to sender letters, new addresses need to be identified.
Research priorities
The GDG recommends conducting randomised controlled trials (cluster ideally) on the effect of this intervention.
Supporting material