An explanation for the problem of false‐negative cervical smears
- 1 April 1989
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
- Vol. 96 (4), 482-485
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1989.tb02428.x
Abstract
Summary. False-negative cervical cytology due to sampling error is a well-recognized problem. Forty-seven women with histologically proven cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) were studied. All had two cervical smears performed at a mean interval of 3 months. At the time of the second smear, cervicography, colposcopy and biopsy were performed. The area of acctowhite cervical lesions and of the total visible atypical transformation zone (ATZ) were measurcd from the cervical photographs. The 17 women in whom one or both smears showed no dyskaryosis were found to have a significantly smaller proportion of their ATZ affected by CIN. It is suggested that this finding can account for the sampling error which causes false-negative cervical cytology. New screening techniques, such as cervicography, may offer a method of detecting and assessing these relatively smaller cervical lesions.Keywords
This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit:
- Evaluation of the atypical Pap smearAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1987
- WHICH SPATULA FOR CERVICAL CYTOLOGY?The Lancet, 1986
- Terminology in gynaecological cytopathology: report of the Working Party of The British Society for Clinical CytologyJournal of Clinical Pathology, 1986
- False-Negative Cytology in Invasive Cancer of the CervixClinical Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1983
- Cervical intraepithelial neoplasia.Journal of Clinical Pathology, 1982
- Cervicography: A new method for cervical cancer detectionAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1981
- Invasive cervical carcinoma in young womenGynecologic Oncology, 1979
- A trap for atypical cellsAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1977
- Estimation of the screening error rate from the observed detection rates in repeated cervical cytologyAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1974
- Influence of cell collection techniques upon cytological diagnosisCancer, 1965