Abstract

BACKGROUND
The aim of this study was to confirm the usefulness of cervicovaginal smears in the screening of squamous cell neoplasms of the uterine cervix by comparative analysis between the cytologic diagnosis of cervicovaginal smears and the histologic diagnosis of tissue specimens.
METHODS
We selected 743 patients who had both cervicovaginal smears and histologic evaluations of the uterine cervix by colposcopic biopsy, conization, or hysterectomy at the Kangbuk Samsung Medical Center between January 2005 and December 2007.
RESULTS
The accuracy rate of cervicovaginal smears and histologic diagnoses was 93.0% (691/743) and showed a high correspondence (kappa value, 0.770, p-value, 0.000). The false-negative and false-positive rates were 0.5% (6/484) and 17.8% (46/259), respectively. The sampling and interpretation errors were identified in four and two cases of six false-negative cases and 29 and 17 cases of 46 false-positive cases, respectively. In screening high grade squamous cell neoplasms, there were no false-negative cases and only one false-positive case which resulted from sampling error. The false-negative rate of cervicovaginal smears and the false-positive rate in high-grade squamous cell neoplsams were very low.
CONCLUSIONS
The cervicovaginal smear is a powerful tool for screening of cervical squamous cell neoplasms.

• Keywords: Cervical smear;Histology;Correlation;Cervical squamous cell neoplsam;Screening