Study of cervical cytology in Papanicolaou (Pap) smears in a tertiary care hospital

Abstract

Background: Cancer of the cervix is the third most common cancer in women. The mainstay of cervical cancer screening has been the Papanicolaou test. Aim: To study the frequency of premalignant and malignant lesions of cervix and to study the clinicopathological aspects of cervical lesions. Materials and Methods: This is a hospital based study of conventional cervical smears received between January 2014 to December 2015. For evaluating the Pap smears, the Bethesda system (2014) for reporting cervical cytology was used. Results: In the present study, 1418 cases were analysed during the mentioned period. Age of women ranged from 16 to 92 years. Commonest complaint was irregular bleeding per vagina and leucorrhea. 1164 smears (82.08%) belonged to NILM category, 132 smears (9.3%) were unsatisfactory for evaluation. ASCUS accounted for 4.87%, ASC-H 0.56%, LSIL 1.62%, HSIL 0.64%, AGC 0.64% and SCC 0.28% of cases. Conclusion: It was found that premalignant and malignant lesions of cervix is not common in our set up. Keywords: Cervical cancer, Cervical cytology, Papanicolaou smear