Cervical Smears

Cervical smears should be taken in a proper way by an experienced person so as to avoid an inadequate material.44 Because of the phases that precede the lesion in the natural progress of invasive cervical cancer, and because they can be easily discovered and treated, the disease is well suited to screening programs. It is now recommended that all patients with abnormal cytology should undergo further investigations.4 Annual Pap smear screening has been favoured over less frequent screening in the United States to minimize the risk of cervical cancer. Although cytological screening programs using Pap smears have dramatically reduced cervical cancer incidence and mortality in developed nations, single Pap tests suffer from suboptimal sensitivity, limited reproducibility, and many equivocal results.7
If detected early, cervical cancer is curable and the 5-year survival rate is as high as 92%.5 The idea behind the PAP-test is that cellular changes that may develop into cancer are detected at such an early stage that they can be removed through a simple operation, thus preventing the cancer.5 Thus, Papanicolaou (Pap) screening has spread, it has become common to detect pre-invasive lesions rather than invasive cancer, and so, the incidence rates have been fallen steadily.9 Evidence for the importance of the PAP-test can be found in statistics from many countries where the PAP-test is used in systematic, comprehensive screening