What should women be doing to stay healthy? - Video

“one in five cervical smear tests will be falsely read as negative” is an untrue and grossly alarmist statement. The fact is 10 – 20% of abnormalities may not be detected by the cervical smear test. This is an inherent limitation of the test and is due to sampling error, non-detection of abnormal cells and misinterpretation of cells. This means that, for example the true abnormality rate was 7% then 10% to 20% of THOSE may be missed in any one screening round. Regular screening markedly reduces (but does not eliminate) the risk associated with a missed abnormality. About 93% of smears are reported as normal and even if the error rate is at the high end of the estimates, the error rate is 20% of 7% which is 1.4% not “one in five”.