Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Comparison of cervical cancer screening by self-sampling papillomavirus
test versus pap-smear in underprivileged women in France
Version: 
2 
Date: 
21 Jul 2020
Reviewer's report:
I have read through this manuscript. My comments and demands are attached in
the PDF document as editors comments. kindly address them and re-submit for
my perusal. Where the comment box is empty please double click to view the
comments. For emphasis, i will highlight some of them here. 
#1 This can be titled: Evaluation of cervical cancer screening strategies for
underprivileged women in France.
The fact that it is an interventional study will best appear in the methodology.
#2 the conclusion paragraph of the abstract:The conclusion that there was
significant number of 'lost to follow ups' which undermines the initial benefits of
the strategy is vague because the authors did not show whether there is statistical
significant difference between the 60.5% and the 63.2% in both groups
#3 the background of the study section from line 8 following, the purpose of the
study stated did not align with the conclusions drawn at the end of the discussion
section
#4 
Women who did not give consent should also be excluded as well as women
on treatment 
or treated for pre-malignant lesions of the cervix
#5 The results section line 35 to 39: I don't seem to agree with the authors here
because it was obvious that the proportion of women in the EG who tested
positive to HPV yet did not appear for Pap testing was as high as 63.2%.
#6 the discussion segment line 36, the authors asserted that SC-HPV method is
less time consuming. This was not true from the study. The study showed rather
that it is more time consuming to complete the test (18.6 in the EG vs 9.5 days in
the CG)
Additional questions:
1) The control group (CG) who had a pap smear; did they also have HPV testing
when cytological anomalies were detected?
2) The results section line 3, the authors stated that out of the 8 ASC-US in the
control group, 3 were caused by an HPV infection. The methodology did not
show that the subjects in the CG with abnormal Pap cytology results were further
subjected to HPV testing. How did they arrive at that?
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