Introduction: Many people diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) do not have symptoms, and may not inform their past or current sexual partners of their diagnosis or routinely use condoms. Several strategies have been used to notify and treat partners of people diagnosed with an STD, but only a limited number of RCTs of their effectiveness have been undertaken.
Methods and outcomes: We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical questions: What are the effects of partner notification strategies in people with different STDs? What are the effects of interventions to improve effectiveness of patient referral in people with STDs? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to August 2008 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up-to-date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).
Results: We found 17 systematic reviews, RCTs, or observational studies that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.
Conclusions: In this systematic review, we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: contract referral; counselling (both alone and in combination with educational interventions) of index patients; educational interventions for the index patient; information for the index patient or partner; outreach assistance; patient referral; patient referral via different types of healthcare professional; patient-delivered partner therapy; patient-delivered home-sampling kits; provider referral; and reminders (any format) for the index patient.