ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To further evaluate the effectiveness of the AutoCyte PREP thin-layer slide preparation (TriPath Imaging, Inc., Burlington, North Carolina) as compared to conventional Pap smears. STUDY DESIGN: A split-sample, blinded evaluation of matched thin-layer preparations and conventional smears from 2,438 patients was performed. This material was enriched by including 260 cases of high grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSILs) and cancer cases from an earlier study. Many of these cases were difficult to diagnose, containing very few abnormal cells on one or both matching slides. The preparations were evaluated multiple times by both thin-layer-inexperienced and -experienced cytology professionals to better compare performance related to preparation quality alone. RESULTS: The initial evaluations of the slides by personnel with only brief training in thin-layer interpretation demonstrated equivalent performance for the two preparations. The reevaluation study by cytology professionals with several months of thin-layer experience demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in detection of both LSIL and HSIL lesions using AutoCyte PREP slides. There was also a statistically significant improvement in the number of satisfactory samples using the AutoCyte PREP method. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrated that the AutoCyte PREP thin-layer slide preparation is at least equivalent to conventional Pap smears in the detection of LSIL and HSIL, even when evaluated by cytology professionals who have been newly trained in the thin-layer method and that, with increased experience, the thin-layer AutoCyte PREP slide preparation method showed a statistically significant improvement in disease detection.
Subject(s)
Mass Screening , Microtomy/standards , Papanicolaou Test , Uterine Cervical Dysplasia/diagnosis , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/diagnosis , Vaginal Smears/standards , Female , Humans , Microtomy/methods , Observer Variation , Professional Competence , Sensitivity and Specificity , Single-Blind Method , Specimen Handling , Vaginal Smears/methodsABSTRACT
Mycoplasma contamination of cell cultures has been shown to perturb a number of immunologic parameters. Because such contamination is almost always introduced in the laboratory, the immunologist requires a procedure to screen his cell lines frequently for mycoplasma. Two procedures recently described for the detection of mycoplasma in cell cultures, the uridine-uracil incorporation procedure and a direct fluorescent assay, were compared with the standard procedures of agar culture and transmission electron microscopy. The results with uridine-uracil incorporation were totally non-concordant with those of any of the other 3 procedures and, moreover, were inconsistent through serial assays on the same cell culture. In contrast, the direct fluorescent assay, using the fluorochrome Hoechst 33258, yielded consistent results in full agreement with the agar culture data. Since the fluorescent assay is rapid and has discriminatory capability at least equivalent to that of agar culture, it would appear to be the method of choice for routine screening of cell cultures for mycoplasma.
