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Pap smear Test Strategy
Campaign to promote Pap tests

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9/1/2008





Introduction to the Pap smear test
The Papanicolaou test is also called the Pap smear, Pap test, cervical smear, or smear test. It is a medical testing method. Aurel Babeş and Georgios Papanikolaou developed this method. Initially, the prime purpose of the method was to pre-cancerous and cancerous processes taking place in the ecto-cervix (O’Dowd & Philipp, 1994). The test was also able to detect infections and abnormalities in the endo-cervix and endo-metrium. The test tries to detect irregularities in the cells of the cervix of a woman. The cervix is the lower part of the womb of a woman that opens into the birth canal. It is possible to tell with the Pap test whether a woman has an infection, abnormal or unhealthy cervical cell, or cervical cancer (Raffle et al., 2003).
The procedure of the test is simple. The physician/ clinician obtain the sample of the cells from the cervix with the help of a wooden scraper and/or a small cervical brush. He then places the obtained sample on a glass slide, preserves it with a fixative, and sends it to the laboratory for examination. The results of the tests could be normal, abnormal, low grade and high grade. Normal results mean that the sample cells were of normal appearance and the doctor recommends a normal smear test after the passage of another two years. An abnormal result means that there is some sort of irregularity in the cervical cells. The cells had turned over rapidly and regenerated and during the process, they have become abnormal or changed. There could be various reasons for the changes in cells; they could be infection, inflammation, or pre-cancerous changes. The doctors classify the changes in the cervical cell according to the surface of the cell. Dysplasia is a term that is used to describe these...