Objective: To assess whether electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) as an adjunctive technology enhances the performance of colposcopy.
Design: Prospective cohort study.
Setting: University Hospital colposcopy clinic.
Participants: Colposcopy with EIS for 647 women and conventional colposcopy for 962 women.
Interventions: Comparison of the performance of colposcopy by referral cervical cytology in two cohorts, with and without EIS as an adjunctive technology.
Outcome measures: Prevalence of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or worse (CIN2+), diagnostic testing accuracy to detect CIN2+ with and without EIS and their relative differences between cohorts.
Results: The prevalence of CIN2+ varied between the cohorts according to referral cytology: 17.0% after abnormal squamous cells of unknown significance referral cytology in EIS cohort and 9.1% in the reference cohort, 16.5% and 18.9% after low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL), 44.3% and 58.2% after atypical squamous cells, cannot exclude high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) (atypical squamous cells that cannot exclude HSIL), and 81.9% and 77.0% after HSIL cytology, respectively. Sensitivity to detect CIN2+ was higher in the EIS cohort, varying from 1.79 (95% CI 1.30 to 2.45) after LSIL referral cytology to 1.16 (95% CI 1.09 to 1.23) after HSIL referral cytology, with correspondingly lower specificity after any referral cytology.
Conclusions: Colposcopy with EIS had overall higher sensitivity but lower specificity to detect CIN2+ than conventional colposcopy. CIN2+ prevalence rates were, however, not consistently higher in the EIS cohort, suggesting innate differences between the cohorts or truly lower detection rates of CIN2+ for EIS, highlighting the need for randomised controlled trials on the effectiveness of EIS.
Keywords: colposcopy; community gynaecology; gynaecological oncology.
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2023. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.