Best practices for HPV testing

New research on HPV testing gave the same test results when Dr. Rachel and Dr. Constance engaged in the same kind of study as the UW Medicine researchers. However, the UW Medicine researchers stated that unlike the study by the Canadian study, the HPV –screening is more accurate at detecting cervical pre-cancers than relying on the existing use of Pap smear. By this, they hope that this HPV and cancer screening would be best used for primary diagnosis for cervical cancer in clinics and home care services.

Treat with the urgency it deserves

This should be held urgent since every year cervical cancers lead to deaths of 4200 women in the US and more devastating it cause deaths of 13200 cases nationally as according to the American Cancer Society. Another study was done on women more than 19000 and was split in two groups. One group was screened directly for the HPV virus and the other group used a Pap smear or cytology test to diagnose cervical cancer.

This study according to Winer would be effective even to reach a group of women who never had had a screening done on them. Most women of aged 30-64 years had never known about the screening services neither was it done on them. This was a 30% representation of this cohort. She exclaimed that this percentage accounts for the many cases of cervical cancers recorded.

She was so hopeful that now women (the single mothers and those in underserved communities) had an opportunity to screen themselves at home, send their sample to the doctor for laboratory analysis and diagnosis and if tested positive for HPV then further screening to ascertain this condition would be done in the hospital and further treatment offered.

New HPV prevention measures under development

HPV vaccination and other measures to prevent its re–occurrences are still being developed. However, most of these studies reveal the use of HPV and cancer screening test to be more sensitive than the use of Pap smear or cytology test results. The HPV screen is more preferred because it gives accurate results as it does not rely on human interpretation of cell samples but accurately identifies the active HPV. Mao also exclaimed that it is more straight forward, cheap and reliable to identify the pre-cancer cells and lesions and other cancers.

 

Contributor: admin