Pap Smear - Rationing Healthcare Or the Right Care?

This is different from the past which recommended screening for cervical cancer at either three years after the time a woman became sexually active or age 21, whichever occurred first.

Over the past year there have been plenty of announcements from the medical profession regarding to the appropriateness of PSA screening for prostate cancer and the timing of mammogram screening for breast cancer. Understandably some people may view these changes in recommendations as the rationing of American healthcare.

They should instead, however, welcome these advancements. Doctors becoming even better at understanding which screening tests work and which ones don't.

Doctors have discovered that for cervical cancer, which is detected by Pap smears, a significant risk factor in infection from the human papilloma virus (HPV). HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease and aside from causing cervical cancer are also the cause of genital warts. Women under age 21, who are healthy and do not have a compromised immune system from HIV or organ transplant, rarely develop cervical cancer from HPV infection.

Unlike the past when women needed annual pap smears, advances in screening with new liquid-based Pap smears as well as screening for HPV allows women to be checked for cervical cancer every other year. Women age 30 and older who have had three normal pap smears in a row can have Pap smears every two to three years with a Pap smear or every three years with a Pap test and HPV DNA screening. Pap Smear - Rationing Healthcare Or the Right Care?

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