Correlation of Pap Smear and Colposcopy with the Histology of Women Who Presented for Cervical Cancer Screening at a Tertiary Hospital in Akure, South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Cervical cancer screening helps in the early detection and prevention of cervical cancer especially when screening methods are available. Methodology: This was a retrospective study conducted at the Oncology clinic of the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital Complex Akure using the records of women who presented for cervical cancer screening from January 2017 to December 2019. Information about their socio-demographic characteristics, cytology, colposcopy and histology reports were obtained. A total of 216 women were presented for screening and out of which 104 had abnormal pap smear results. However; only the reports of 100 women had correlated histology and thus were analysed using SPSS version 23. Results: The majority of the women were between 40-59years, and were married (96%) and had between 3-4 children (56%). Among them 71% were reported to have had atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS), 24% with low grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LGSIL); while 5% had high grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HGSIL) on cytology. The sensitivity of cytology was found to be 34.6% and a specificity of 94.7% while colposcopy showed a sensitivity of 97.5% and a specificity of 73.7%. The accuracy of cytology was 46% and that of colposcopy was 93%. Conclusion: The study showed a good correlation and a higher accuracy in the detection of pre-malignant lesions when cytolology is combined with colposcopy.