After breast cancer, cervical cancer is the most common female malignancy that is associated with younger age groups, or occurring more frequently in sexually more active women.
It would be ideal if each woman had a gynecological examination and a Pap smear once a year.
The latter is the most important test for prevention of cervical cancer, and its regular implementation reduces the risk of cervical cancer mortality for 90%.
Gynecological exam is performed on a special gynecological table with the patient in a lying position, keeping her legs bent up and knees apart. The exam is short and painless, and involves looking within the vagina and the visible parts of the uterine cervix on speculum examination. The gynecologist takes a cervical swab specimen which is then sent to the cytologist, prepared using a special technique and evaluated. Malignant cells, if any, are detected using the staining method developed some fifty years ago by a Greek scientist Papanicolaou, after whom the Pap test was named. The sampling is very simple, quick and painless, and of great benefit, too.
This is the sole method to identify patients at high risk of cervical cancer and to confirm genital infections, which play a very important role in the development of this cancer as well as other abnormalities of the female reproductive system that may result in infertility. Immediately after the sample for the Pap test is swabbed, the provider will do a bimanual exam. With gloved fingers of one hand in the vagina and another hand on the abdomen, the provider carefully palpates the uterus, ovaries and the surrounding structures to feel the location, shape, size, relationship and, of course, sensitivity to pain. In the hands of an experienced gynecologist, such examination provides information about pathological changes of the examined organs, if any, to evaluate the need for further diagnostic testing, i.e. ultrasound examination.
