SAPC conference heads to Exeter

The 48th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Academic Primary Care (SAPC) is being held in Exeter from the 3-5 July and will see sessions chaired, and presentations given, by a number of CanTest colleagues.

CanTest Associate Director Richard Neal will chair the session on cancer, whilst Senior Faculty member Gary Abel will be chairing the lightning talks session, as well as giving a presentation on research “Investigating the impact of case-mix on general practice cancer diagnostic outcome indicators”.

Sam Merriel, CanTest Clinical Research Fellow, will present during a workshop session called “How can decision modelling help us to evaluate the clinical- and cost-effectiveness of diagnostic strategies in primary care?”. He will be supported by a number of other Senior and Junior CanTest colleagues.

During one of the poster sessions, Sarah Bailey, CanTest Postdoctoral Researcher Fellow, will be presenting work relating to her CanTest project on “Establishing diagnostic accuracy of haemoglobin in faecal immunochemical tests (FITs) and establishing a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for FITs in the English primary care symptomatic population: A cohort study in the South West of England”.

Jessica Watson from Bristol will present the results of her CanTest affiliated PhD project on the diagnostic utility of inflammatory markers in primary care during two talks; “Which inflammatory marker tests should be used in primary care? A cohort study using CPRD” and “Does a raised inflammatory marker in primary care predict one-year mortality? A prospective cohort study using CPRD”.

Other CanTest work being presented during the conference includes results from the project “Exploring the impact of the NICE guidelines for suspected cancers on diagnostic interval and resource use within GP practices”, in a talk by Sarah Price focusing on ovarian cancer diagnostic times. Luke Mounce also presents work from his CanTest affiliated project “Are patients with high-normal platelet counts at increased risk of cancer?” during his talk on the NORMA study.

The annual SAPC conference brings together researchers and educators from the primary care community in the UK and around the world to showcase their latest studies on any aspect or issues relating to primary care. This year’s themes is Primary Care: Arriving? Or departing?

In 2020, SAPC will be hosted by another of the CanTest institutions, the University of Leeds.