‘Blood in pee’ campaign: Increased demand on secondary care with no change in cancers diagnosed

Patel, Kunjan; Hall, Susan Jane; Shraddha, Kamath; Stanford, Richard; Williams, Simon; Lund, Jon

Abstract

Objective:
As part of the national Be Clear on Cancer campaign, the ‘blood in pee’ campaign was launched in 2013. We aimed to evaluate the impact of the campaign on 2-week wait (2WW) referrals and the resulting diagnoses of malignancy at a single trust, and secondly, to evaluate the socio-economic background of patients referred.

Patients and methods:
Suspected cancer 2WW patients in the 3 months pre- and post-campaign were included. Demographics, investigations and diagnoses were recorded. A Kolmogorov–Smirnov test demonstrated a normal distribution. The data were treated as parametric and analysed with the unpaired Student’s t-test.

Results:
Referrals for visible haematuria significantly increased by 52% from 135 pre-campaign to 205 post-campaign (p = 0.03). There was a fall in the proportion of patients diagnosed with malignancy from 20.27% pre-campaign to 15.36% post-campaign. The mean index of multiple deprivation score of referrals did not change: p = 0.43.

Conclusion:
This campaign has increased referrals without increasing the proportion of malignancies diagnosed, placing large demand on services without benefit or extra funding. Nor has the campaign effectively reached deprived socio-economic groups. There is little evidence as to the efficacy of untargeted cancer awareness campaigns and further work is needed to improve their pick-up of malignancies.

Citation

Patel, K., Hall, S. J., Shraddha, K., Stanford, R., Williams, S., & Lund, J. (2019). ‘Blood in pee’ campaign: Increased demand on secondary care with no change in cancers diagnosed. Journal of Clinical Urology, 12(1), 15-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/2051415818801187

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 22, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 8, 2018
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Deposit Date: Dec 6, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 11, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Clinical Urology
• Print ISSN: 2051-4158
• Electronic ISSN: 2051-4166
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 15-19
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2051415818801187
• Keywords: Urology; Surgery
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1379097
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2051415818801187
• Contract Date: Jul 11, 2019