[Epidemiology, prevention and early detection of cervical cancer]

Persistent infections with human papillomaviruses are a necessary cause of cervical carcinomas. The development of HPV-based prevention tools, HPV vaccination and HPV testing, is leading to major changes in cervical cancer prevention programs worldwide. A decade after introduction of HPV vaccination in many countries reductions of HPV infections and cancer precursors have been observed in young women. The focus is now on the integration of new approaches for screening of increasingly vaccinated populations.

A successful cervical cancer prevention program includes primary screening, triage of screen-positives, and colposcopy-biopsy to identify women with cancer precursors who require treatment. The role of primary screening is to identify a small subset of women with increased risk of cervical precancer, while the majority of women can be reassured that their risk is very low. Depending on the primary screening test, additional triage testing is required to decide who should be referred to colposcopy. Currently, there are three major approaches to cervical cancer screening: Cervical cytology, HPV testing, and HPV-cytology co-testing. Several triage tests for HPV-positive women are currently being evaluated, including cytology, HPV genotyping, p16/Ki-67 cytology and various methylation tests. Due to the increasing number of options for cervical cancer screening, it is challenging to keep screening guidelines current and comprehensible. The increasing complexity can lead to confusion among providers and women who participate in screening programs about the best approaches. Precision prevention is a novel approach to cervical cancer screening that integrates individual medical history with test results for unified, risk-based management decisions.