Objectives: to describe the performance and the impact on the population coverage of a population-based organised screening programme with primary HPV-DNA test.
Design: population-based cohort study.
Setting and participants: organised screening programme for women aged 30-64 years.
Main outcome measures: coverage of the target population with Pap test and HPV-DNA test, compliance to invitation, positivity at HPV-DNA testing, proportion of positive Pap test (squamous cells of undetermined significance or more severe, ASC-US+), referral for colposcopy, positive predictive value (PPV) of the cytology triage for grade-2 or more severe intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2+), detection rate of CIN2+. Regarding coverage, seasonally adjusted trends of the PASSI surveillance from 2008 to 2014 were analysed. To evaluate performance, data of the information screening system were used.
Results: from December 2011 to December 2014, 48,852 women were invited for screening and 22,991 participated (48.4%); in addition, 968 women spontaneously participated in the programme, achieving a total of 23,959 screened women. The HPV test resulted positive for 2,000 women (8.4%). After triage 1,049 women were referred for colposcopy because of ASC-US+ (No. 968) or inadequate result (No. 81). The compliance at 12 months retesting among women with positive HPV test and negative triage was 79.3%, and the HPV positive rate was 60.4%. In the whole, 1,322 women were referred for colposcopy (5.5%) and 1,221 were actually tested. The overall detection rate for CIN2+ was 6.2/1,000. From 2011 to 2014, spontaneous Pap tests passed from 7,461/year to 2,491/year; the test coverage achieved a positive trend and it settles in recent years to 83%, including 43% of HPV-DNA.
Conclusions: compliance to screening of invited women was satisfactory compared to previous experiences in Liguria Region (Northern Italy). Performance indicators confirm what was observed in other Italian experiences.