Detecting eating disorder patients in a general practice setting: a systematic review of heterogeneous data on clinical outcomes and care trajectories
Abstract
PURPOSE: The incidence and prevalence of eating disorders (ED) is low in general practice (GP) settings. Studies in secondary care suggest that the general practitioner has an important role to play in the early detection of patients with EDs. The aim of this study was to describe the effect (clinical outcomes and care trajectory) of screening for EDs among patients in general practice settings.
METHODS: A systematic review was conducted on Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase and WOS. The studies included were to have been carried out in a primary care setting, with screening explicitly performed in GP practices and follow-up information.
RESULTS: Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. For all ED patients, there was an increase in the frequency of consultations in GP setting, referrals to psychiatric resources and drug prescriptions such as antidepressants, following screening procedures. Clinical outcomes remained unclear and heterogeneous. One study focused on the course and outcome of ED patients identified by screening in the GP setting and reported recovery for anorexia nervosa (AN) and BN in more than half of the cases, after 4.8 years of mean follow-up. In this study, early age at detection predicted better recovery.
CONCLUSION: Most of the literature on the role of the GP in screening for and managing EDs consists of opinion papers and original studies designed in a secondary care perspective. The impact of systematically screening for EDs in a primary care setting is…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a systematic review, done in people. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid.
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.