In the United States, Medicaid recipients and women with no health insurance have the lowest screening rate. The number of pap smears also decreases with age and with lower education levels. Based on this information, it becomes important to develop strategies and provide screening programssss for individuals who are medically underserved. It is also equally important to develop effective education programs to enhance the public awareness of the necessity of utilizing cervical smear screening. Making the pap smear universally available is a major challenge in the fight against cervical cancer.
Controversy remains in regard to the recommended interval of cervical cytologic screening.
She is Chief of Pathology at University Medical Center. The practicing physicians should repeat a normal pap smear or utilize other adjunctive screening techniques, such as colposcopy, cervicography and speculoscopy, when a patient is at high risk. Grossly abnormal cervix should undergo biopsy for tissue diagnosis. Attempts have also been made to complement pap smears by the use of HPV DNA testing. However, lack of specificity of HPV DNA typing limits the use of this technique as a screening test.