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posted by martyb on Friday August 24 2018, @07:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the Biannual?-Nope.-Semiannual?-Nope.-Triannual?-Nope.-What-DO-they-call-that? dept.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has released new recommendations on screening for cervical cancer. These latest recommendations continue the trend of decreasing participant burden by lengthening screening intervals, making the "annual Pap" a historical artifact. Since its introduction 75 years ago, exfoliative cytology commonly known as the Pap test has been the "gold-standard" screening test for cervical cancer.

In the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the USPSTF, an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention, updates its 2012 recommendations for cervical cancer screening with one important addition. This is the first time the USPSTF has recommended a method of cervical cancer screening that does not include the Pap test.

[...] The new USPSTF guidelines recommend that women ages 21 to 29 years be screened for cervical cancer every three years with the Pap test alone. This recommendation remains unchanged from 2012. For women ages 30 to 65 years, the USPSTF recommends screening for cervical cancer with primary high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) test alone every five years. As an option, they also recommend the previous guideline of hrHPV test and Pap test together (co-testing) every three years.

What was novel in the 2012 USPSTF recommendations was that women ages 30 to 65 years were given the option for the first time to be screened with hrHPV test and Pap test together every five years to lengthen their screening interval. The 2018 recommendations go one step further by including, for the first time, the option of hrHPV testing alone, without a Pap test, every five years.

The table in the new USPSTF recommendations also acknowledges an important trade-off. Co-testing is slightly better than primary hrHPV testing at detecting precancerous lesions but is associated with increased tests and diagnostic procedures that may not benefit the patient and have real costs to the health care system. Pap tests detect changes in cervical cells that could indicate the presence of pre-cancer or cancer, while HPV tests detect the genetic material or DNA of the high-risk types in cervical samples.

Journal Reference:
Lee A. Learman, Francisco A. R. Garcia. Screening for Cervical Cancer: New Tools and New Opportunities. JAMA, 2018 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.11004


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @01:27PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @01:27PM (#725782)

    Yeah, he should let feminists be idiots. When the WHO released guidelines suggesting that mammograms should only be done once every two years, feminists went bonkers. In my neck of the woods, the belief developed that all men were denying women healthcare and trying to control their bodies.

    I expect about the same here.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:17PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:17PM (#725808)

    To be fair, when you've been told for years that mammograms are very important to get regularly because early detection has an incredible impact on disease pathology, then it is reasonable to expect pushback. Hell, people get angry when trivial things change like whether Pluto is a planet, eggs or margarine being good/bad for you, and paper bags being bad/good for the environment.

    This specific example also has extra baggage because politicians politicised the issue of HPV vaccines by making it some sort moral judgment about where slutty girls get what they deserve and virtuous girls are protected by silver rings.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 24 2018, @02:35PM (#725817)

      Oh. I had heard from the politicians and NPR and such that if we mutilate boys genitals at birth, HPV could no longer be transmitted to women, and cervical cancer would be cured for all time.