Knowledge, attitudes and practices of primary care physicians in colorectal cancer screening, jeddah, saudi arabia 2012

Abstract

Background: CRC ranks as 2nd leading cause of cancer mortality, and accounts for approximately 9 % of cancer deaths in US. In Saudi Arabia, CRC accounting for 10.4% of all newly diagnosed cases in year 2010. It ranked first among male population and third among female population. Although CRC is lethal diseases, but it is preventable forms of cancer if early detected. PHC doctors are the cornerstone of CRC screening. Objectives: To assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices of PHC physicians regarding CRC screening in MOH, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2012. Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional comparative study was adopted. It involved all PHC doctorspracticing in Jeddah PHC facilitiesbelonging to MOH, at the period of the study, 2012. A validated self-administrated questionnaire has been used for data collection. The questionnaire consists of main three parts; Recommendations for CRC screening, (2) CRC screening performance and follow up, and (3) Practice and personal characteristics. Results: 106 PHC physicians completed this study out of 127, giving a response rate of 83.5%. Almost 93.4% of participants aged < 50 years. Females represent 63.2% of them. Most of physicians (91; 86.7%) recommended Fecal occult blood test for CRC screening while colonoscopy,flexible sigmoidoscopy, and to much less extent double contrast barium enema was recommended by(73; 68.9%), (56; 53.3%), and (23;21.7%) physicians, respectively. About half of the physicians (55; 52.9%) reported that they have ordered or performed FOBT to screen for CRC. Lack of trained staff to conduct either follow-up with invasive endoscopyor screening other than FOBT were cited by 73.3% and 64.8% of the physicians, respectively as major obstacles for CRC screening. Conclusion: knowledge and a positive attitude toward FOBT is high and consistent with increasing support for population based FOBT screening in asymptomatic patients > 50 years old. The majority of our sample indicated that they would recommend such screening tool. However, the practice is suboptimal.