Evaluating the performance of three different cervical cancer screening modalities in a large prospective
Fangbin Song1, Hui Du1, Aimin Xiao1
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen 518036, Guangdong, PR China; Shenzhen Key Laboratory on Technology for Early Diagnosis of Major Gynecological Diseases, Shenzhen 518036, Guangdong, PR China.
Background:
This study aimed to evaluate three different patterns of cervical cancer screening strategies for detection of cervical diseases.
Methods:
In total, 10,186 women aged 21-70 years attending cervical screening program were recruited and cotested by human papillomavirus (HPV) assays and cytology. Three-year histological follow-up data was recorded on women with abnormal screening results, and six clinically common screening algorithms were evaluated.
Results:
Significantly better protection against cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2 or worse (CIN2+) at three-year follow-up was associated with a negative HPV result than by normal cytology at baseline. HPV screening was more sensitive and less specific than cytology screening. Moreover, HPV screening with HPV16/18 and reflex cytology (atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance [ASCUS] threshold) showed a similar sensitivity (94.6% vs. 98.2%, p = 0.125) and a superior specificity as compared to cotesting reflex HPV16/18 and cytology (ASCUS threshold) for CIN2+ (95.8% vs. 95.1%, p < 0.0001), achieving a colposcopy referral rate of 5.4%, and consuming 4.8 colposcopies and 4.4 cytology tests to find one CIN2+.
Conclusions:
HPV screening with triage of HPV-positive women by HPV16/18 genotyping and cytology provided a good equilibrium between screening effectiveness, the number of cytology tests required, and referral rates; HPV testing was similar in sensitivity to cotesting and safer than cytology, thus especially suitable for large population-based screening programs.
