How safe is a three-year screening interval for cervical cancer with conventional cytology in southeastern Serbia?

Aim: Purpose of this investigation was to determine the influence of cervical cytology on the reduction of high-grade cervical in-traepithelial lesions (HSIL) and cervical cancer (CC) incidence. Materials and Methods: All the patients treated for HSIL and CC at the Clinic for Gynecology and Obstetrics Nis in the last three years. All filled in questionnaires. Before the surgery treatment, human papillomavirus (HPV) test samples were obtained from all the patients. Results: The results have shown that a three-year cervical cancer screening using conventional cytology is not reliable enough and it has not been shown to result in statistically sig-nificant reduction of HSIL and CC incidence. Conclusion: HPV test has increased the reliability of cytology in detecting pre-invasive lesions and it has statistically significantly reduced false-negative rate of cytology results in micro-invasive and invasive changes of the cervix.

Conventional cytology; Human papillomavirus testing; Cervical cancer screening.

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