Reliability of reporting the presence of transformation zone material in Papanicolaou smears using an automated screening system
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Published on: July 25, 2017
I Erbarut Seven1, H Mollamemisoglu1, F Eren1
1Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey.
Objective:
This study was conducted to evaluate the reliability of using an interactive automated screening system (IAS) to determine the presence of endocervical and/or metaplastic cells (transformation zone material; TZM) in liquid-based cytology (LBC) Papanicolaou (Pap) smear slides.
Materials And Methods:
A series of LBC Pap smears was manually screened to determine the presence or absence of TZM. The results were compared to those obtained through IAS.
Results:
ThinPrep® Imaging System (Imager)-assisted screening indicated that 22.4% of the slides did not contain TZM in cases in which previous manual screening revealed that 100% of the slides did contain TZM.
Conclusion:
The reliability of determining TZM through IAS is limited. Manual screening of the slides appears to be necessary to report the presence of TZM accurately.
