The evaluation of Papanicolaou (Pap) smear processing in the health centers of Shahrekord in 2005

Papanicolaou (Pap) smear screening is an effective method of detecting cytological changes in cervix before they lead to cervical cancer. To determine the quality of process of Pap smear and comparison of pathologist and cytologist reports about quality of obtained samples and accuracy of diagnosis, this study was performed.

In this cross sectional study which performed during spring and summer 2005, the processing of a total of 160 Pap smears were observed randomly by standard checklist. Also a total of 360 Pap smear samples reported by a cytologist were examined by a pathologist and the Kappa correlation coefficient was compared between the two reports.

The function of midwifes in patient recording was 96.15% good and 3.85% poor. The function for Pap sampling was 88.72% good and 11.28% poor. In the pathologist report, the quantity of specimen, infection cellular changes, inflammation reactive changes, cell abnormality were reported were 308(85.5%), 12(3.3%), 232(64.4%) and 3(0.83%), respectively. There was significant relationship between pathologist and cytologist reports (p<0.05).

According to the result, the quality of processing of Pap smear, the quality of obtained samples and accuracy of diagnosis were acceptable. However, we suggest more supervision and attention about midwifes and cytologists practices.