Detection of false-negative Papanicolaou smears by rapid rescreening in a large routine cervical cytology laboratory

Rapid rescreening was established in our laboratory in 1995, following the publication of several studies indicating improved sensitivity for the detection of abnormalities in cervical smears. During the study period, 285,841 negative smears (representing 89.09% of the total workload) were rapidly rescreened. A total of 7,650 (2.68%) were identified as abnormal or suspicious and selected for full rescreening. Of these, 228 cases were considered abnormal following pathologist review and resulted in the issue of an amended report. This represents an increased detection rate for all abnormalities of 0.08%. Of the cases with histological follow-up, a high grade epithelial abnormality (HGEA) was confirmed in 31% of cases and a low grade epithelial abnormality (LGEA) in 42%. We conclude that rapid rescreening is easily incorporated into the daily workflow of a large routine cervical cytology laboratory, Our results support conclusions from previous studies that rapid rescreening is an effective quality control technique resulting in the detection of increased numbers of abnormal smears.