Publication:

Cervical Pap smear study and detection of abnormal epithelial lesions and determination of its accuracy by cytohistological correlation in patients of tertiary care teaching hospital in central India

Background Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in females and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Pap smear is simple, cost effective and sensitive tool for screening of various non-neoplastic and neoplastic lesions of cervix. The objective of this study was to determine the pattern of various cervical smear abnormalities in our center, to study the prevalence of epithelial cell abnormalities in our study population and to determine the accuracy of Pap test by correlating with histopathology.

Methods This was a retrospective study of 7127 cervical pap smears screened and reported at department of pathology, Sri Aurobindo institute of medical sciences Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India during the period of January 2013 to December 2015. Pap smear was done by the conventional method and reporting was done based on the Bethesda system .Emphasis was put on epithelial cell abnormalities and the findings of abnormal epithelial lesions were correlated with histopathology.

Results In this study, the epithelial cell abnormalities constituted 2% of all cases. Low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion was the most common epithelial cell abnormality found in our study group followed by HSIL and then squamous cell carcinoma. About two thirds of the abnormal epithelial lesions were found in the age group above 40 years. Our cytological diagnosis correlated well with histopathology.

Conclusions Pap smear is a cost effective and sensitive screening method for detection of cancerous, pre-cancerous and non-cancerous lesions of cervix.