ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 21, 1996 TAG: 9611210032
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: Associated Press
ONE-THIRD of Pap smears in the United States would be eliminated if a new study's findings are followed.
Women who have had hysterectomies for some reason other than cancer don't need Pap smears anymore, a study found.
Pap smears are used to check for signs of cancer, primarily in the cervix but also in the uterus or vagina. But in hysterectomies, the uterus and cervix are removed, and vaginal cancer is extremely rare and can be detected visually.
``The use of the Pap smear after hysterectomy for benign disease should become a thing of the past,'' Dr. Kenneth L. Noller wrote in an editorial accompanying the study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
That could eliminate nearly one-third of the 50 million to 60 million Pap smears given each year, saving hundreds of millions of dollars annually, said Dr. Thomas E. Nolan of LSU Medical Center, lead author of the study.
A Pap smear, in which cells are swabbed from the genital canal and put under a microscope, costs $20 to $30. Currently, Pap smears are recommended every one to three years, even for women who have had hysterectomies for reasons other than cancer, such as fibroid tumors or endometriosis, a painful growth of the uterine lining.
Dr. Jonathan Berek, vice chairman at the UCLA Medical School and director of the Women's Oncology Center at UCLA, said he and many other doctors have already dropped Pap smears from some women's exams.
``This reaffirms the fact that most of the cancers that occur in the lower genital canal are cervical and not vaginal,'' Berek said.
The LSU study looked at 10,595 vaginal smears from 6,265 women treated at New Orleans' Charity Hospital over three years. The doctors found 104 abnormal smears from 79 women who had had hysterectomies for reasons other than cancer. None of those abnormalities turned out to be cancer, although one woman did not return for follow-up.
LENGTH: Short : 46 linesby CNB