Socioeconomic differences in help seeking for colorectal cancer symptoms during COVID-19

[摘要] All letters are subject to editing and may be shortened. General letters can be sent to bjgpdisc{at}rcgp.org.uk (please include your postal address for publication), and letters responding directly to BJGP articles can be submitted online via eLetters. We regret we cannot notify authors regarding publication.For submission instructions visit: bjgp.org/lettersWe read with interest the paper by Ip et al exploring socioeconomic differences in help seeking for colorectal cancer symptoms during COVID-19.1 While we agree with the importance of this topic, the study has significant weaknesses that limit its validity.We felt it should have been clear from the title onwards that the study is about participant-reported help seeking associated with educational attainment. The latter is a poor indicator of socioeconomic status,2 whereas a measure, such as the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD),3 that considers several factors which contribute to socioeconomic status would have been more appropriate.Participant recruitment was conducted through a ‘Market Research Participant Recruitment Agency’ (https://www.sarosresearch.com/). The authors state that participant screening was conducted by the company based on symptoms relating to bowel cancer. However, they do not report in this paper the symptoms that the chosen participants were reported as having, the duration of these symptoms, and the subsequent diagnosis (and if it was indeed bowel cancer). The only indication of their symptoms was provided in the quote captions; however, some of these were non-specific, such as ‘extreme tiredness’, which are not in themselves necessarily indicative of colorectal cancer. Details of the inclusion criteria that were used to identify participants should have been reported, together with any eligibility checks undertaken.We note that sadly the patient contributor died during the study. It would have been helpful to understand the extent of their involvement in the research design or methods, as this detail was missing.Some of the conclusions and recommendations are not relevant to the findings reported; for example, the recommendation to ‘ensure infection control measures for COVID (and wider) are overt and embedded into NHS services’ is unrelated to the aims of the study.Finally, it is regrettable that this study did not include general practices or their patients.As such, we feel that this paper’s conclusions and recommendations should be regarded with considerable caution.© British Journal of General Practice 2022REFERENCES 1.↵Ip A, Black G, Vindrola-Padros C, et al. (2022) Socioeconomic differences in help seeking for colorectal cancer symptoms during COVID-19: a UK-wide qualitative interview study. Br J Gen Pract, https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2021.0644.

[学科分类] 卫生学