Despite the fact that the Pap smear has been around for 70-plus years and is credited with greatly reducing the incidence of cervical cancer, screening remains imperfectly executed in the United States. Adherence to guidelines is suboptimal and plagued nationally by a combination of overscreening, underscreening, and poor management of women with abnormal test results. Lack of guideline adherence is in part driven by confusion regarding the use of conventional cytology testing versus newer cotesting strategies (Pap cytology plus human papillomavirus [HPV] DNA testing). Two abstracts presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO’s) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer (March 19-22; San Diego) address economic and clinical benefit considerations of cervical cytology screening. In a population partially vaccinated against HPV, a cotesting strategy has the highest screening costs, but also the lowest cervical cancer incidence and mortality, according to an abstract presented at SGO by Catherine Popadiuk, M.D., from of Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. Popadiuk and colleagues used the Cancer Risk Management Model-Human Papillomavirus (CRMM-HPV) Canadian population microsimulation model to assess three screening strategies in a vaccinated population (HPV types 6/11/16/18). The three strategies included: triennial Pap smear in 25 to 69 year olds (PAP3); triennial Pap smear […]