Background: Exfoliative cervicovaginal cytology-Papanicolaou (Pap) smear has been regarded as the gold standard for cervical cancer screening. Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women after breast and colon cancer. The main objective of the study is to analyse various spectrum of cytopathological abnormalities of both symptomatic and asymptomatic women on cervical Pap smears in the department of Pathology in a tertiary care hospital.
Methods: This is a retrospective study which is conducted in department of Pathology in a tertiary health care centre for a period of 2 years during June 2017 to June 2019. We evaluated total 1800 reported pap smears during the study period and analysed for the prevalence of various cytopathological abnormalities.
Results: Out of 1800 patients, 79 cases were found to be having epithelial abnormalities. Non neoplastic cytological diagnosis was made in 1677 cases (93.18%). The commonest epithelial abnormality was Low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) (32 cases, 1.77%), followed by High grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) (27 cases, 1.50%).
Conclusion: In developing countries like India, Cervical cancer is one of the commonest Cancers in women. We strongly recommend Cervicovaginal cytology screening by Conventional/Liquid based Pap cytology which are simple, non-invasive, sensitive, less expensive, reproducible procedure at periodic interval for early detection and treatment of premalignant, malignant and inflammatory conditions to reduce the overall morbidity and mortality associated with cervical cancer.
