Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Knowledge amongst General Practitioners in Western Sydney

¹Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, Australia

²Liverpool Hospital, Sydney, Australia

³Bankstown Hospital, Sydney, Australia

*Corresponding Author:

Brian Fernandes
Medical Officer, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital
RPA Hospital Missenden Rd, Camperdown, New South Wales
2050, Sydney , Australia
Tel: 0433 035 653
E-mail: ferbrian@gmail.com

Received date: March 26, 2017; Accepted date: April 18, 2017; Published date: April 20, 2017

Citation: Fernandes B, Cherrett C, Moryosef L, Lau N, Wykes J (2017) Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: Knowledge amongst General Practitioners in Western Sydney. J Community Med Health Educ 7:517. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000517

Copyright: © 2017 Fernandes B, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: The west of Sydney has a high population of Asian descent, a high risk population to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). There is a lack of primary research focused on evaluating the clinical knowledge amongst primary health providers in managing this presentation.

Method: A cross-sectional study, involving surveying 113 General Practitioner (GP) practices in the Fairfield and Bankstown city region on clinical knowledge around key aspects of epidemiology, aetiology, clinical presentation and management of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma. 42 surveys were completed.

Results: GPs were well aware of many NPC symptoms, with over 90% recognizing epistaxis, nasal obstruction and cervical lymphadenopathy. Many GPs were aware of several aetiological factors for NPC, in particular smoking (95.2%), however a significant proportion were not aware that Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), pre-existing Ear Nose & Throat (ENT) disease, and formaldehyde exposure were key risk factors (60%). All participants judged CT, MRI and specialist referral as useful management options but a significant proportion (29.7%) would chose to refer between 2-4 weeks from presentation outside the critical 2 weeks’ time frame. Nearly half of the GPs surveyed (45.2%) believed that they had insufficient knowledge of NPC and required further information (81%).

Conclusion: GPs in the west of Sydney would benefit from further education in order to improve the diagnosis and management of these patients.

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