Cervicography: a preliminary report

Cervicography is a photographic method to document abnormal cervical lesions. Screening for abnormal cervical lesions, one of the seven proposed purposes for cervicography, was investigated in this study. We evaluated 578 cervigrams obtained from patients with normal cervical cytologic tests. The evaluated cervigrams were placed in one of four categories. Seventy-nine (13.7%) of the patients had normal cervigrams; in 152 (26.4%) the result was unsatisfactory; in 159 (27.5%) the cervigram was technically defective; and in 188 (32.5%) the result was suspicious. One hundred one of the patients with suspicious cervigrams had colposcopic evaluations. In 69 patients colposcopically directed biopsies were done; 14 patients had koilocytotic atypia, seven had grade 1 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, three had grade 2 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, and one patient had an invasive cervical carcinoma. Although cervicography has not been proved to be cost effective, it is a method worthy of further evaluation.