Primary care sector versus treatment centre follow up for post-treatment cervical squamous intraepithelial neoplasia...

The NHSCSP 2004 guideline recommends that the best practice for the follow up of post-treatment squamous intraepithelial neoplasia (SIL) is by cytological surveillance in the treatment centre or alternatively, in the primary care sector as a minimum standard. We undertook this study to test this recommendation.

In a colposcopy clinic of a district general hospital of UK.

Retrospective analysis of 418 patients treated for squamous intraepithelial neoplasia whose post treatment cytological surveillance was followed up for 18 months after treatment. A prospective patient preference questionnaire was also undertaken in 50 randomly chosen patients having treatment to elicit their preferences for the place of follow up.

At 8 months 66.4% had their first smear in the primary care sector as compared to 88.6% in the treatment centre. The post-treatment follow up smear performance graph seems to be different for the primary care sector compared to treatment centre. In 12 months nearly 90% of the patients had at least one smear and by 18 months 96.9% of the treated patients had a follow up smear in the community which would detect residual disease. There was no statistically significant difference in the detection of residual disease in the community compared to the treatment centre during the follow up period. A total of 76% of patients preferred to have their follow up smears in the primary care.

Targets set by the NHSCSP of UK were not met either by the primary care sector or the treatment centre in the 8 months but was satisfactorily achieved by both in 12 months.

These preliminary results indicate a need for a larger multi centre randomised trial to establish if the primary sector is truly a satisfactory alternative for patient follow up. Cytological surveillance is best carried out in the place desired by the patients to allow good compliance with the monitoring process.