Interobserver agreement in the diagnosis of cervical smears

The present study was carried out to reveal the magnitude of individual variation in the diagnosis of Pap smears between two cytoscreeners and their compatability with cytopathologists and subsequent final diagnostic comparison with biopsy in 1,17411 cervical smears collected from different hospitals of Delhi during ten-year period. Smears diagnosed as dysplasia at initial level by any one of the cytoscreeners were screened by cytopathologists for confirmation of diagnosis. An overall agreement of 94.9 percent was observed between two screens. 79.5 percent was agreement between screeners and cytopathologists. An agreement between cytology and histology in the diagnosis of dysplasia and malignancy were found to be 61.9 percent and dysplasia and malignancy were found to be 61.9 percent and 40.1 percent respectively. From the above study, it was observed that consistency among the two screeners was fairly acceptable. Keeping this observation in view, we can possibly practice two tier screening in place of three.