Study of Cervical Pap Smears in a Tertiary Hospital

Background Cancer of the cervix is the leading cancer among females of india. Cancer of cervix is readily preventable, and can be diagnosed at the pre-invasive stage with adequate and repetitive cytological screening with Papanicolaou (Pap) smears. Objectives This is a retrospective study aimed to evaluate all previously conducted cervical smears examined at a teaching tertiary hospital during a six month period. Methods Detailed clinical data and Pap smear cytology reports were obtained and data noted in a structured proforma. All the smears were reported as per the 2001 Bethesda system. Results A total of 500 Pap smears were examined. Maximum number of patients was in the age group of 31 40 years (fourth decade). There were 37 (7.4 %) unsatisfactory or inadequate samples. A total of 430 smears were reported as Negative for Intraepithelial Lesion or Malignancy (NILM), of which 60 (12 %) showed normal cytological findings and 370 (74 %) were inflammatory. Out of a total of 500 Pap smears, only 33 (6.6 % %) cases were reported to have epithelial cell abnormality. The 33 abnormal cases comprised of 20 cases with ASC-US, 8 cases of LSIL, 2 cases of HSIL, 2 cases of invasive squamous cell carcinoma, and one case of adenocarcinoma cervix. Conclusion Premalignant and malignant lesions of cervix can be diagnosed easily by Pap smears. The epithelial cell abnormality rate in our study was 6.6 %.