Glandular Cell Abnormalities on SurePath Preparations: A Retrospective Review with Cytology-Histology Correlations

Detecting glandular lesions is challenging by all Pap test methodologies. As the availability of data on identifying glandular abnormalities by SurePath is scarce, we investigated the detection rates and the correlation with histology follow-up.

A total of 105,927 cases (SurePath and conventional) were searched for the diagnosis of atypical glandular cells or higher glandular abnormalities (AGC+) with the corresponding histologic diagnosis. The associations between the Pap test methods and diagnostic categories were assessed by χ2 test.

Overall, 0.32% of SurePath (159/49,375) and 0.29% of conventional (164/56,552) cases showed AGC+ (p = 0.38). Histology confirmed significant abnormalities in 42 versus 53.5% of the cases, respectively (p = 0.064); 72.7% (SurePath) versus 65.2% (conventional) of these were glandular in nature (p = 0.37). The diagnosis of neoplasia (favored or definitive) showed malignancy on follow-up in 100% of SurePath cases (12/12). In contrast, 82.1% of these conventional cases disclosed premalignant or malignant lesions by histology (p = 0.12).

AGC+ cases showed higher prevalence on SurePath preparations. Conventional cases had more abnormalities on follow-up, while glandular lesions represented a higher proportion of abnormal histologies following SurePath AGC+s. The positive predictive value of favored or definite neoplasia was higher in SurePath cases. Overall, these differences were not statistically significant.