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Golden oldies in cancer detection

A recent French study on cancer has revealed that conventional cervical smear tests for cancer detection in women are better than the new cervical smear tests.

The study done at the Institute of Curie France by the French Society of Clinical Cytology has been reported in this weeks British Medical Journal, a copy of which has been received by us at our Health Desk. According to this report the study had been conducted on 2585 women of whom 828 had been referred for treatment due to abnormalties detected on previous smears and the rest had been on routine smears.

Each woman had again been subjected to a conventional cervical smear test and then again tested on the new methods - Monolayer Cytology and Human Papillomavirus Test.

The finding was that the new methods performed no better than the conventional method. The study team which comprised Prof. Joel Coste, Professor of Medical Statistics Publique-Hospitaux de Paris Faculte de Medecine, Cochin-Port Royal, Universite Paris conclude.

"These results support the superiority of conventional smear testing and have implications for regulation of medical devices, clinical practice and future research on screening for cervical cancer.

"Monolayer testing (the new method) is less reliable and more expensive and should not replace conventional smear tests for cervical cancer screening while the human papillomavirus testing (the other new method) should be further evaluated."

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