Can HPV vaccines eliminate genital warts?

HPV vaccines and their impact on clinical outcomes are discussed by Dr Grace Lee, Deputy Director Goodfellow Unit and Associate Professor Nikki Turner, academic General Practitioner and the Director of the Immune Advisory Centre.

Topics covered include:

    •  The risks of HPV infection and clinical outcomes. Recognition of HPV as a major causal agent of multiple cancers.
    • An overview of HPV vaccines.
    • HPV vaccine effectiveness: impact on genital warts and precancerous cervical lesions. 
    • Vaccine safety and common HPV vaccine myths.

    Resources

    Peer group discussion points
    During the MedTalk, Nikki discussed the risks of HPV infection and the wide array of clinical pathology HPV can cause, alongside the impact of vaccination on some of these clinical outcomes.
    • Are you up to date with the current management of these conditions? If not, has this provoked any further learning activities or CME that you could utilise to improve your identification or management of such conditions?
    • When considering the impact of HPV vaccines on clinical presentation. Have you noticed a change in presentation rates of genital warts or pre-cancerous cervical lesions in your practice?

    As highlighted during the interview, there continues to be equity issues with Maori women having an incidence of cervical cancer 2-3 times higher than other groups.

    • Have you identified this cohort at risk within your practice?
    • What strategies are you using to increase cervical screening and cancer symptom awareness for this population?
    • Have you thought about other ways to reduce barriers for patients engaging with their primary health care providers? e.g. normalising the conversation of women’s health, sexual health or menstrual bleeding.
    • Are there improvements to be make at a practice level e.g. insuring recall systems are up to date, training practice nurses to be smear takers, offering opportunistic cervical smear testing.

    We have a safe and effective vaccine that is now available.  As primary health care providers we have an important role in vaccine education.

    • What advice do you currently give to your patients and caregivers?
    • How do you think this might change after viewing this MedTalk with its discussion on HPV risk and vaccine safety?
    • What strategies do you use to deal with the mythology that often surrounds vaccination?
    • Have you had any challenging experiences with vaccine education? How did you manage it at the time and what did you learn from the experience?
    • Do you have any favourite resources that you use for patient education?

    This MedTalk is supported by

    Date Published: 
    Monday, March 4, 2019

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