Draft Federal Guidelines Say Screening Every Three Years May Be All That Most Women Need

Pap smears once in 3 years will replace annual checkups according to the new guideline. Read up to know more.

Team@CMHF

New federal guidelines are urging doctors to back off annual cervical cancer screening for most women. Instead the recommendations say most women between 21 and 65 years old should only be screened every three years, and that more frequent screening may do more harm than good.

The draft guidelines come from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). They’re the first new recommendations on cervical cancer screening to come from the agency since 2003.

Meanwhile, several other organizations, including the American Cancer Society, have issued their own similar recommendations.

In all, they still strongly urge regular cervical cancer screening using Pap tests or similar methods for women 21 and over.

Cervical cancer deaths have been falling steadily for decades. There were about 12,200 new cases of cervical cancer and 4,210 deaths from the disease in the U.S. in 2010, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The USPSTF now recommends that women age 21 to 65 who are at average risk for cervical cancer get screened every three years for cervical cancer. That’s a change from their previous recommendations.

“I see women who’ve been told for so long that you must have an annual Pap. They’re a little caught off guard when they hear it might not be needed as often. But most are happy,” LeFevre says.

Another big change is that cervical cancer screening is no longer recommended for women and girls under 21 years of age. Previous recommendations urged women to start screening at age 21 or within three years of beginning sexual activity, whichever came first.

Infection with HPV, or the human papilloma virus, is known to be associated with later development of cervical cancer. It’s sexually transmitted, and as many as 50% of all young sexually active women have been infected. But the task force did not recommend regular HPV screening because most scientific studies were not conclusive in finding benefit to combining the screening with regular Pap tests or performing HPV testing alone instead of Pap tests.

Instead, the task force recommended that women under 30 not get screened for HPV. They didn’t offer any hard advice for women over 30, citing a lack of solid evidence.

Ref: http://www.webmd.com/cancer/cervical-cancer/news/20111019/guidelines-suggest-less-frequent-screening-for-cervical-cancer