Loading...
When a Papanicolaou smear is reported as showing no endocervical cells (EC), clinicians generally repeat the procedure immediately because the sample is presumed to be inadequate. To determine whether this practice is necessary, these Australian researchers identified a large group of women with negative Pap smears (some of which had no EC), and repeated the Pap smear about 1.5 years later. They theorized that if significant numbers of abnormalities were missed on the initial smears lacking EC, then follow-up smears containing EC should show an increased incidence of neoplasia in these women compared with women who had EC on both sets of smears.
For the 6542 women with EC on both smears, the incidence of definite or equivocal cervical intrae…