Physicians who have had cancer or experienced a close friend or family member's cancer are more likely to go against ovarian cancer screening recommendations, a study published in the Journal of Women's Health found.
The study findings include survey results from 497 primary care physicians.
"Most doctors are pretty comfortable with the idea that our personal experience can make a positive impact on our practice. We've known someone, and so it gives us insight into how to take care of patients in similar circumstances," said Margaret Ragland, MD, pulmonary critical care specialist at Aurora-based CUHealth University of Colorado Hospital. "This study helps us realize that sometimes it can go beyond that. Personal experiences can impact our practice in a variety of ways."
Since the chance for harm from screening outweighs the benefits for low-risk patients, screening for ovarian cancer is not recommended for women of average risk.
But when physicians in the study were presented with a vignette describing a woman of average risk, 31.8 percent of primary care physicians who had personal experience of cancer chose to offer this screening. Only 14 percent of physicians without personal experience of cancer offered the screening.
"The reasons that doctors with personal cancer experience may be more likely to not follow screening guidelines are complicated, and we don't know all the answers," Dr. Ragland said. "But my hypothesis is that a doctor's personal experience may influence their assessment of risk. You see a patient in front of you and you may assess the risk to be higher than it actually is."