Middle-aged women can choose which test to undergo for\u00a0cervical cancer screening, according to a draft recommendation from an\u00a0influential group backed by the U.S. government.
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Women ages 30 to 65 can choose to receive a Pap test every three years or a\u00a0human papillomavirus (HPV) test every five years, according to the U.S.\u00a0Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). The group didn’t previously recommend\u00a0HPV testing without a Pap test.
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“Women and providers should continue to recognize that cervical cancer is a\u00a0serious disease that can be prevented,” said Dr. Maureen Phipps, a member of the task force.
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“Women who can be identified early through screening can have effective\u00a0treatment for cervical cancer and go on to lead robust lives,” said Phipps, who\u00a0is also chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School\u00a0of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
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Cervical cancer was once a leading cause of cancer death for women in the\u00a0U.S., but the death rate has been cut in half thanks mostly to screening,\u00a0according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).<\/p>\n
An estimated 1,550 Canadian women will be diagnosed with\u00a0cervical cancer\u00a0in 2017. An estimated 400 will die from it, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Canadian Cancer Society\u00a0says provincial and territorial\u00a0screening programs\u00a0use the Pap test to find cervical cancer early and sometimes the HPV test may be used along with it.
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The USPSTF last addressed cervical cancer screening in 2012, when it advised\u00a0women ages 21 to 65 to have a Pap test every three years. Women ages 30 to 65\u00a0could lengthen the time between screenings to five years if they also received\u00a0an HPV test at the same time.<\/p>\n
A woman’s experience does not differ by the screening; both of the tests\u00a0require analysis of cells scraped from the cervix. But the Pap test \u2014\u00a0also known\u00a0as cytology \u2014\u00a0looks for potentially cancerous cells on the cervix. The HPV <\/a>\u2014\u00a0or\u00a0hrHPV \u2014\u00a0test looks for the virus that can cause cervical cancer.
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After a review of new evidence, the USPSTF recommends that women ages 21 to\u00a029 receive a Pap test every three years. For women ages 30 to 65, they recommend\u00a0either a Pap test every three years or an HPV test every five years.
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Unless a women is at high risk for cervical cancer, the USPSTF recommends\u00a0against screening after age 65.
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Phipps told Reuters Health that the HPV test may not be right for younger\u00a0women since infections with the virus often clear up on their own. Additionally,\u00a0they recommend against screening among most older women since the risk of\u00a0cervical cancer is low.
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As for now allowing women between 30 and 65 to choose between Pap and HPV\u00a0tests, the USPSTF writes that the individual tests “offer a reasonable balance\u00a0between benefits and harms.”<\/p>\n
They caution that HPV testing leads to much higher rates of additional\u00a0testing than Pap testing. They did not examine the costs of these screenings,\u00a0however.
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The American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists (ACOG) still\u00a0recommends Pap testing alone or in conjunction ith HPV testing, said Dr. Linus\u00a0Chuang, who is professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at\u00a0the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
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“I don’t think this will make American obstetricians and gynecologists\u00a0change practice, because they will look at ACOG as gold standard,” said Chuang,\u00a0who was not involved with the new recommendations. “But this will challenge it.”
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The USPSTF is accepting public comments<\/a> on its draft recommendations online here<\/a> until\u00a0Oct. 9.
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Middle-aged women can choose which test to undergo for\u00a0cervical cancer screening, according to a draft recommendation from an\u00a0influential group backed by the U.S. government. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Women ages 30 to 65 can choose to receive a Pap test every three years or a\u00a0human papillomavirus (HPV) test every five years, according to the Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}