Diagnostic Role of Manual Method of Liquid Based Cervical Cytology

Abstract

Background: The introduction of the Pap test as a screening procedure to detect precancerous lesions has helped to reduce both the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer. In order to improve the sensitivity, specicity of the Pap test there has been a shift from conventional cytology to Liquid based cytology. A disadvantage of the Liquid based cytology is the high cost automated processing equipment. On the other hand, Manual Liquid-Based Cytology is a technique that also enables cells to be suspended in a monolayer similar to Liquid based cytology and improves detection of precursor lesions, specimen adequacy and also a cost effective strategy in limited resource setting. To compare the Objective: diagnostic utility of Manual liquid-based cytology versus Conventional pap smear in cervical cancer detection on cervical smears. Materials and Methods: In this prospective comparative study, 210 samples were collected for conventional pap smears and Manual Liquid-Based Cytology to compare the two methods and to correlate with histopathological diagnosis where specimen was available. The Manual Liquid-Based Results: Cytology showed sensitivity of 100% , specicity of 91.7% while conventional smears had sensitivity of 75% and specicity of 85.7%.The diagnostic accuracy of Manual Liquid-Based Cytology was 98% and that of conventional method was 78% The p value was less than 0.005 in Manual Liquid-Based Cytology (0.0001) and CPS (0.0001) methods considering histopathology as gold standard. This study Conclusion: showed that Manual Liquid-Based Cytology has a higher sensitivity and specicity than conventional pap smears.