Frequency and diagnostic reliability of subvisual morphologic markers for malignancy in the cervical epithelium

Nowadays the existence of malignancy associated changes in the epithelium of the cervix uteri is commonly accepted. There are some differences in the view about the nature of these changes. Some hints were given by previous studies for the epithelial changes to exhibit possibly early preneoplastic aspects. In this study subvisually morphologic changes were detected in intermediate cells of the cervical smears by means of image analysis (ZYPAB-3-system). Our investigations on 117 patients suffering from cervical neoplasias as well as healthy controls have shown that the malignancy associated changes are not only limited to about two third of patients with cervical neoplasias but also existent in close to a fourth of healthy women. Those healthy people are considered to be at higher risk for developing a cervical neoplasia than other healthy women.