Taking Part
The screening trial involves having a heartburn health check with the capsule sponge test at one of our mobile units. The appointment will take about 40-45 minutes. If you are invited and would like to take part, you can follow the link in your invitation text message to book an appointment near you.
The day of the Capsule Sponge Test
Before your appointment, you will be asked not to eat or drink for 4 hours. Small sips of water can still be used to take medication. If you take blood thinning medication, you may need to stop this on the day of your appointment. You can contact your doctor to check this is right for you. Stopping instructions for relevant medications are below:
After the Capsule Sponge Test
Specific instructions for finding the mobile unit will be included in your booking confirmation. At the appointment, a nurse will discuss the trial and the test with you in detail. They will ask a few questions about your health to check the trial is right for you. If you still want to take part, the nurse will ask you to complete a consent form. You will then have the capsule sponge test, which takes about 10 minutes. The whole appointment will last 30 to 45 minutes.
Find out more about how the test works below.
After the Capsule Sponge Test
You will receive your results within 4 weeks by text message. The results of the test will decide if you need any further checks using endoscopy.
If the results show no signs of cell changes in the oesophagus, no further tests are needed. There will be nothing more you need to do for the trial.
If the results do show signs of cell changes in the oesophagus, an endoscopy may be needed. The endoscopy will confirm if there are any health problems that need further tests or treatment. The BEST4 team will arrange this for you at a local hospital.
At the time of the endoscopy, we will also invite you to give blood and saliva samples. This will be for future research purposes only and will not inform your care. This is because researchers are also developing early cancer tests from blood and saliva. Giving these additional samples is completely voluntary.
Read more about the health problems the capsule sponge tests for here.
Changing your mind
You can stop taking part in the trial at any time. If you choose to stop taking part, we would like to continue to use information collected about your health by the Heartburn Health programme. We would also like to continue to collect health information from your records at your hospital. If you do not want this to happen, you can tell us, and we will stop.
We will keep any samples or information that we already have. We need to manage your records in specific ways for the research to be reliable. This means that we will not be able to let you see or change the data we hold about you.
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