Study of Cervical Pap Smears in a Tertiary Hospital.

ABSTRACT

Cancer of the cervix is the third most common cancer in women. In India and other developing countries cervical cancer is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Cancer of cervix is readily preventable, and can be diagnosed at the pre-invasive stage with adequate and repetitive cytological screening with Papanicolaou (Pap) smears. Objectives: This is a retrospective study aimed to evaluate all previously conducted cervical smears examined at a teaching tertiary hospital during a two year period. Methods: Detailed clinical data and Pap smear cytology reports were obtained and data noted in a structured proforma. All the smears were reported as per the 2001 Bethesda system. Results: A total of 560 Pap smears were examined. Maximum number of patients was in the age group of 31 – 40 years (fourth decade). There were 32 unsatisfactory or inadequate samples (5.71%). A total of 498 smears were reported as Negative for Intraepithelial Lesion or Malignancy (NILM), of which 95 (16.96%) showed normal cytological findings and 403(71.96%) were inflammatory. Out of a total of 433(77.32%) abnormal Pap smears, only 30(6.92%) cases were reported to have epithelial cell abnormality. The 30 abnormal cases comprised of 13 cases with ASC-US, 11 cases of LSIL, two cases of HSIL, three cases of invasive squamous cell carcinoma and one case of adenocarcinoma cervix. Conclusion: Premalignant and malignant lesions of cervix can be diagnosed easily by Pap smears. The epithelial cell abnormality rate in our study was 5.36%.