Effectiveness of rapid prescreening and 10% rescreening in liquid-based Papanicolaou testing

Am J Clin Pathol. 2012 Jan;137(1):150-5. doi: 10.1309/AJCP6LW4SYBTISOW.

Abstract

Although rapid prescreening (RPS) has been shown to be an effective quality control procedure for detecting false-negative conventional Papanicolaou (Pap) tests, RPS has not been widely implemented in the United States. In our laboratory, cytotechnologists performed RPS in 3,567 liquid-based Pap tests: 1,911 SurePath (BD Diagnostics-TriPath, Burlington, NC) preparations that were manually screened and 1,656 ThinPrep Pap tests (Hologic, Bedford, MA) that were imaged using the ThinPrep Imaging System (Hologic). We compared the sensitivity of RPS, 10% rescreening (R-10%), and routine screening (RS). In contrast with previously published findings, we found that RS + RPS did not improve screening sensitivity compared with RS + R-10%. These results support the following hypotheses: (1) Higher baseline RS sensitivity as a result of Pap test diagnoses standardization implemented for quality improvement purposes decreases the performance impact of RPS. (2) R-10% and RPS quality assurance methods detect diagnostic failures caused by different types of cognitive errors.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

  • False Negative Reactions
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Mass Screening / methods*
  • Papanicolaou Test*
  • Quality Assurance, Health Care
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / diagnosis*
  • Vaginal Smears / methods*