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Screening with acetic acid could prevent 22 000 deaths from cervical cancer in India every year

BMJ 2013; 346 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f3935 (Published 17 June 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;346:f3935
  1. Meera Kay
  1. 1Bangalore

Women who were screened by primary health workers who used visual inspection with acetic acid were less likely to die of cervical cancer, a large Indian study has found.

The research, which looked at the effectiveness of acetic acid screening by primary health workers in reducing cervical cancer mortality, found that the method could actively reduce cervical cancer mortality by nearly one third. The results were presented at the 49th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago at the beginning of June.

The study involved 150 000 women in India aged 35-64 years who were randomly assigned to screening with acetic acid by primary health workers (75 360 women) or no screening (76 178 women) and were followed for 12 years. Women in …

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