Women under 25 should be offered screening

doi:10.1136/bmj.39115.406771.1F

BMJ 2007;334:273 (10 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39115.406771.1F

Letters

Cervical screening

Women under 25 should be offered screening

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

There may be several reasons why cervical screeningcoverage in young women has fallen yet again, including problemswith access to appointments with general practitioners, butthe new policy not to screen women aged 20-24 can hardly havehelped.¹ It was announced with the message that screening thatage group caused more harm than good, which is unlikely to encouragethem to accept their invitations from age 25. Prevalence ofcarcinoma in situ (CIN3) has increased in women aged 20-24 (figure),which is consistent with more women in recent birth cohortsstarting sexual activity in their mid-teens.

View larger version (29K):

Registrations of carcinoma in situ (CIN3), England (source www.statistics.gov.uk)

The new policy will add more than 3000 womenwith untreated CIN3 to the larger numbers failing to accepttheir invitations later on. We accept that any degree of CINmay regress, invasive cervical cancer (ICC) is rare in womenunder 25, and . . . [Full text of this article]

Amanda Herbert, consultant histopathologist and cytopathologist¹, John H F Smith, consultant histopathologist and cytopathologist²

¹ Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London SE1 7EH amanda.herbert@kcl.ac.uk , ² Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield S10 2JF

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BMJ 2007 334: 172. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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Rapid Responses:

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Women under 25 deserve better: George Kassianos
bmj.com, 12 Mar 2007 [Full text]
Offering screening to women under 25: Bernard J Charnley
bmj.com, 19 Feb 2007 [Full text]