A new study led by led by Eduardo Franco, Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology at McGill's Faculty of Medicine was released in the U.S today and states that the human papillomavirus (HPV) screening test is more accurate than the traditional Pap smear in detecting cervical cancer.
The results of the study put the accuracy of the HPV screening at 94.6 percent while the older Pap smear had only an accuracy rate of 55.4%. The study followed 10,154 Canadian women from 2002-2005 with a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
"Women currently vaccinated against cervical cancer will still need to be screened, because the vaccines that are available now only prevent about 70% of all cervical cancers, and they're primarily for young women. The HPV test may be ideal for vaccinated women once they reach screening age, because it gives us an opportunity to monitor the protection that the vaccine is supposed to give them," said Franco.
The Papanicolaou (Pap) test was invented in the 40s and requires technicians to look for abnormalities, under a microscope, in the cells collected from a patient's cervix. It has been the standard screening procedure for cervical cancer for over 50 years.
Worldwide more than 250,000 women die from cervical cancer each year.
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