We have developed and evaluated an intervention to provide women with the knowledge, confidence, motivation and skills to present promptly with breast cancer symptoms (the Promoting Early Presentation Intervention; Forbes et al, 2011), which is currently being piloted within the NHS Breast Screening Programme.
Patients who have significant symptoms, and perceive them to be so, may present promptly.
Raising cancer awareness among the public is a recent UK government strategy to encourage symptomatic patients to present promptly in primary care.
Hopefully, the notification of persons who received potentially tainted lots of methylprednisolone will lead those who develop symptoms to present promptly to health care facilities.
Continued follow-up is important because a woman needs to retain the knowledge, confidence, motivation and skills to present promptly; it may be many years before she develops a breast symptom that may be due to breast cancer.
We have developed the Promoting Early Presentation (PEP) Intervention to equip older women with the knowledge, skills, confidence and motivation to present promptly with breast symptoms, and thereby improve survival from breast cancer.
Although South Asians may present promptly to hospital they are more likely to encounter delays between arrival and treatment as shown in some (but not all) studies in the UK [ 41] and Canada [ 38].
The uniquely large and sustained effect of the PEP Intervention on breast cancer awareness increases the likelihood that a woman will present promptly should she develop breast cancer symptoms up to many years later.
It is designed to provide older women with information about the symptoms and risk of developing breast cancer, and the motivation, confidence and skills to present promptly on discovering a breast change [ 4, 5].
We have developed an intervention to equip older women with breast cancer awareness (Burgess et al, 2008), in other words, the knowledge, confidence, motivation and skills to present promptly to primary care on discovering breast cancer symptoms, and thereby improve survival.
