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Screening for cervical cancer by direct inspection
V Singh1, A Sehgal, U K Luthra
1Institute of Cytology and Preventive Oncology (ICMR), Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi, India.
Objective:
To assess the efficacy of visual screening for cervical cancer in the maternal and child health setting.
Design:
Clinical and cytological screening.
Setting:
Maternal and child health centres, Delhi.
Subjects:
44,970 women attending the centres from May 1988 to March 1991.
Results:
238 cancers in early stages (0-IIa) were detected cytologically and proved through biopsy. Prevalence of cancer in women defined as high risk through examination by speculum was 29/1000 as compared to 1.53/1000 among women with a normal looking cervix. Though only 11.4% women belonged to the high risk category, 63% had early stage cancer. If all women with bleeding symptoms were included in the high risk category, the yield of cancer would be 71.4% (170/238) by referring only 15.6% of women attending maternal and child health centres for further evaluation through cytology or colposcopy.
Conclusion:
Though visual screening is a suboptimal strategy in comparison to the cytological screening, it may be useful where there is a heavy load of prevalent cancer and where cytological screening may not be available for years to come.