Searching for an ideal cervical cancer screening model to reduce false-negative errors in a country with high prevalence of cervical cancer

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop an ideal cervical cancer screening model to reduce false-negative errors in Korea where there is a high prevalence of cervical cancer. We conducted a cross-sectional study including 33,531 women who underwent routine cervical cancer screening in Korea. Colposcopic examinations were performed after abnormal results on their screening tests. Diagnostic capacities including sensitivity, specificity, and false-negative rate of each screening scenario were analysed at the CIN1 or worse (CIN1+) threshold with colposcopic biopsy results considered the gold standard. A total of 4117 women had valid results for Papanicolaou (Pap) cytology, human papilloma virus (HPV) tests, cervicography, and colposcopically directed biopsy were included in this study. The disease prevalence of CIN1+ was 38.1%. Pap-alone resulted in the highest false-negative rate of 46.9%, followed by HPV-alone at 25.1%, cervicography-alone at 18.7%, Pap/HPV-combined at 15.0%, Pap/cervicography-combined at 6.9% and Pap/HPV/cervicography-combined at 2.9% in a sample of 1570 women with CIN1+ lesions. Therefore, cervicography demonstrated excellent performance for the detection of CIN or cervical cancer and markedly reduced false-negative errors when used in combination with Pap cytology and HPV tests.

IMPACT STATEMENT

• What is already known on this subject? False-negative rate of Pap smears is as high as approximately 40–50%. Limitations of the Papanicolaou (Pap) test have led to the development of new screening programmes for cervical cancer, such as combination screenings with human papillomavirus (HPV) tests or cervicography.

• What do the results of this study add? Pap-alone resulted in the highest false-negative rate of 46.9%, followed by HPV-alone at 25.1%, cervicography-alone at 18.7%, Pap/HPV-combined at 15.0%, Pap/cervicography-combined at 6.9% and Pap/HPV/cervicography-combined at 2.9% in a sample of 1570 women with CIN1+ lesions.

• What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? Cervicography demonstrated excellent performance for the detection of CIN or cervical cancer and markedly reduced false negative errors when used in combination with Pap cytology and HPV tests.

Keywords:

• Uterine cervical neoplasms
• cytology
• cervicography
• human papillomavirus
• screening

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.