CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Vol 15, 158-160, Copyright
© 1965 by American Cancer Society
A Comparative Study of Patient-Obtained Vaginal Irrigation and Physician-Obtained Vaginal Aspiration and Cervical Scrape Smears in Cancer of the Cervix
W. A. D. Anderson M.D.1 and
Samuel A. Gunn M.D.2
1 Chairman of the Department and Professor of Pathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine and Director of the Pathological laboratories at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Florida.
2 Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
The best protection against cervical cancer is a physician's examination which includes a scraping directly from the cervix. It has also been shown in this study, as well as in former ones, that the accuracy of the vaginal aspiration smear is inferior to the cervical scrape. In our opinion, its [See Table 1 in PDF source accuracy is far too low to advocate its use even in mass screening. In a recent report, Richart concluded that the vaginal irrigation smear was no better than the smear obtained by conventional vaginal aspiration. Contrary to Richart's data, however, this present study indicates that the patient-obtained vaginal irrigation smear is far superior to the physician-obtained vaginal aspiration smear. It may be concluded that when a physician's examination is not available, the new self-administered vaginal irrigation smear can be advocated as a useful preliminary screening method. A note of caution must be inserted, however. The irrigation smear requires skilled technicians for laboratory preparation and cytologic interpretation, in order to insure its full potentiality. [See Table 1 in source pdf]
