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 up to 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 must avoid eating or drinking for 4 hours. As the sponge will sit briefly in your stomach, it needs to be empty for the test. Small sips of water can still be used to take medication.
If you take blood thinning medication (e.g. heparin, warfarin, apixaban, rivaroxaban etc), you may need to skip any doses you would usually take the night before and on the morning of your test. This is because there is a very small risk of bleeding when the sponge is removed.
Contact your doctor to check this is right for you. Stopping instructions for relevant medications are below:
At your appointment, the nurse will tell you when you can take your next dose.
The location of the mobile unit can be found within the booking link in your confirmation text message.
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 test 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 clinical team will arrange this for you at a local hospital.
At the time of the endoscopy, we will also invite you to give a blood sample. 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. Giving these additional samples is completely voluntary.
Read more about the health problems the capsule sponge tests for below:
Changing your mind
You can stop taking part in the trial at any time. Withdrawing from the trial means:
• We will not contact you about booking a capsule sponge test appointment
• We will not use further health information from your Heartburn Health record for the BEST4 Screening Trial
• We will keep any samples and information about you that we already have. This is to make sure that our research is reliable.
Please click this link to submit your request to withdraw. If you choose to stop taking part, you will still be part of Heartburn Health.
If you want to leave Heartburn Health as well, please complete the form on the Heartburn Health website.
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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