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March 15th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women only need to get a Pap test once every three years to check for cervical cancer, and don’t need to be screened until age 21 – even if they’re sexually active earlier, according to new guidelines from a government-backed panel.
The statement from the United States Preventive Services Task Force, released on Wednesday, aligns closely with guidelines from three U.S. cancer groups that were also announced on Wednesday.
Once they hit 30, women also have the option of getting screened once every five years if they choose to do Pap tests together with human papillomavirus (HPV) testing every time, the committees agreed.
“The bottom line is, we strongly recommend screening,” said Dr. Virginia Moyer, chair of the USPSTF and a pediatrician at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
The recommendation to test every three or five years is based on evidence that cervical cancer is relatively slow-growing, she said, so it’s very unlikely a woman would develop advanced cancer in the few years after a negative screening.
“The women who get and die of cervical cancer are the women who aren’t getting screened,” Moyer told Reuters Health. “It’s not the woman who hasn’t had a screen in a couple years that’s the problem.”
Moyer’s group attracted controversy late last year when it recommended against annual prostate cancer screening in men, after concluding that the possibility the tests could invite unnecessary and potentially harmful follow-up procedures outweighed their benefits.
The USPSTF’s latest recommendations are based on a review of evidence on screening’s success at detecting pre-cancerous lesions, as well as both physical and psychological side effects of Pap and HPV tests. Its guidelines were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The task force found a benefit for Pap tests every three years in women age 21 to 65, or every five years when Pap tests and HPV tests are done together, starting at 30.
Screen more frequently, and the possibility of women getting complications from any related procedures – such as an exam and biopsy, called a colposcopy, following an abnormal Pap – outweighs any benefit to the extra tests.
Women under 30 shouldn’t be tested for HPV because the sexually transmitted infection is common in young people and often goes away on its own, without increasing the cancer risk.
Women who are older than 65 and were screened regularly in the past are also probably in the clear, unless they’re at particularly high risk due to a history of precancerous lesions.
Until there’s more long-term data on women who’ve been vaccinated against HPV, they should continue getting normal screening, according to the report.
CANCER GROUPS AGREE
The guidelines broadly agree with others released by the American Cancer Society, the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology and the American Society for Clinical Pathology. Those groups favor screening with both Pap and HPV tests every five years once women hit 30, but say every three years with Pap tests alone is also acceptable. Again, they recommend screening from age 21 to 65 in most cases.
In their report, released in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and other partner journals, the group’s report estimates that without screening, 31 to 33 out of every 1,000 U.S. women would be expected to get cervical cancer in their lives. With Pap tests done every three years, that falls to five to eight per 1,000.
The relative benefit is slimmer when the tests are done more frequently, but the chance of having side effects from testing is just as high each time.
“Screening too much and too sensitively finds primarily benign infections that really would be better left unfound,” said Philip Castle, head of the American Society for Clinical Pathology Institute, who worked on those guidelines.
“Doing more than what’s evidence-based actually has potential harms for patients, and that shouldn’t be minimized.”
That includes the psychological harms of being told you have an abnormal test, he said. After that, some cervical procedures done as follow-up have been shown to increase women’s chances of having a premature baby later in life.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 12,000 U.S. women get cervical cancer every year – most caused by cancerous strains of HPV.
Castle said the focus needs to be on making sure that everyone gets the basic level of screening, especially poor women who live in isolated areas.
Moyer agreed that targeting those groups is going to make the biggest difference in cutting rates of new cervical cancer cases and deaths.
“We need to get the women who have not had a Pap smear in the past five years in,” she said. “The women who aren’t getting screened at all, that’s the tragedy.” SOURCES: http://bit.ly/an7XRm and http://bit.ly/yVwIPk Annals of Internal Medicine and CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, online March 14, 2012.
(Editing by Michele Gershberg; Desking by Eric Walsh)
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This is still not evidence based – the Dutch and Finns are the ones to watch here, they’ve managed to keep vested and political interests out of screening (or they don’t control it anyway) and their programs are aimed at doing what’s best for women. They both offer 7 pap tests, 5 yearly from 30 to 60 and the Finns have the lowest rates of cc in the world, the Dutch have no more than the States or Australia, but both countries refer FAR fewer women for colposcopy/biopsies – the more often you test, the more false positives you produce with no increased benefit. Over-treatment can damage the cervix and lead to cervical stenosis, infertility, c-sections, cervical incompetence, premature babies, high risk pregnancy and cervical cerclage, miscarriage etc
The Dutch are moving with the evidence again…women will be offered 5 hrHPV primary triage tests at ages 30, 35, 40, 50 and 60 and only the roughly 5% who test positive will be offered a 5 yearly pap test, they have a small chance of benefiting from pap testing. HPV negative women will be offered the HPV program and there is also a reliable self-test option, the Delphi Screener. This program will greatly reduce pap testing, false positives and potentially harmful over-treatment and is more likely to prevent these rare cancers, including the ones missed by pap testing.
BUT, it will also see profits for vested interests plummet…with far fewer women testing and being “treated” – IMO, doctors and others in many other countries like the States and Australia will fight to protect their profits and NOT do what’s best for women.
As a low risk woman, my risk from cc is near zero, I made an informed decision almost 30 years ago to decline pap testing and recently also declined breast screening. (The Nordic Cochrane Institute, an international medical research group, says mammograms are of no to little benefit and cause significant over-diagnosis) Our doctors do not recommend routine pelvic and breast exams.
I think women should do their own research and make informed decisions about testing and routine exams.
You’ll find more info on the Delphi Screener at the Delphi Bioscience website and the new Dutch program is set out under prevention,programs 2011 at the website of the Health Council of the Netherlands. HPV News, The Netherlands also provides lots of real information on the program.
Great info Elizabeth, thank you.