PAP Test

NEW Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines for the Pap Test

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have recently recommended new Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines for the Pap Test

“The tradition of doing a Pap test every year has not been supported by recent scientific evidence,” says Alan G. Waxman, MD, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and who headed the document developed by ACOG’s Committee on Practice Bulletins-Gynecology. “A review of the evidence to date shows that screening at less frequent intervals prevents cervical cancer just as well, has decreased costs, and avoids unnecessary interventions that could be harmful.”

The majority of deaths from cervical cancer in the US are among women who are screened infrequently or not at all. Cervical cancer is a slow growing cancer caused by certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV), an extremely common sexually transmitted disease among women and men.

Read the full article NEW Cervical Cancer Screening Guidelines for the Pap Test.