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Cervical screening in England and Wales: its effect has been underestimated
Author(s) -
Herbert A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
cytopathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.512
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1365-2303
pISSN - 0956-5507
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2303.2000.00272.x
Subject(s) - medicine , cervical screening , cervical cancer , incidence (geometry) , cervical carcinoma , cervix , disease , carcinoma in situ , gynecology , obstetrics , uterine cervix , cervical cancer screening , carcinoma , cancer , physics , optics
Opinions about cervical screening in the UK tend to follow one of two negative lines of thought. The first is that cervical cancer is a rare disease, and too much time and effort are spent on screening. The second is that it has been relatively ineffective, since incidence of invasive carcinoma did not fall until the NHS Cervical Screening Programme (NHSCSP) was introduced in 1988, although it fell by 40% since then. This paper presents publicly available data to demonstrate that neither of these views is true. Registrations of invasive carcinoma of the uterine cervix and carcinoma in situ in England and Wales between 1971 and 1996 show that a substantially increased risk of disease in women born since 1940 has been reversed, almost certainly by greatly improved screening. Cervical carcinoma is now a rare disease because most cases are prevented before they become invasive, mostly by screening young women, aged 20–40, before the decade of life when symptomatic cervical carcinoma most frequently presents.