[The correlation between the study data on the Papanicolaou cytological smear and the data on direct...

A study was carried out to examine the relationship between the clinical data, the data from the Papanicolaou smear and the direct immunofluorescence for C. trachomatis in 70 women with infectious cervicitis. The prevalence of Chlamydial infection in the study population was 27%. The study showed that one third of the women in whom the Papanicolaou smear revealed inflammatory changes might be expected to be infected with C. trachomatis. The probability of not having infection when no inflammatory changes were observed in the Papanicolaou smear was 0.74--negative predictive value which means that more than two thirds of the women without inflammatory changes in cytology smear will not be infected with C. trachomatis.