An evaluation of Cervical Cytological Screening in the University Teaching Hospital, Lusaka

Abstract

Carcinoma of the cervix was the commonest type of female cancer recorded over a four year period 1968-1972, in the Zambia Southern Cancer Registry. Due to lack of knowledge of the disease in the general population, patients fail to report symptoms, and usually present when the disease has reached a late stage. Results of treatment are then poor, as radiotherapy is not available, and surgery cannot be expected to cure the late stage of the disease with which the patient usually presents. Screening of cervical scrape smears may however detect carcinoma-insitu, or early invasive carcinoma (Schiller 1933), and the results of surgery in these early cases are good. An educational programme. to alert those patients at risk, supplemented by cervical cytological screening would reduce the number of patients being picked up in the late stages of this fatal disease. Against this background it was decided to start a diagnostic cytology unit, initially as a pilot project. It was then hoped to expand the service to cope with mass cytological screening. An evaluation of the results of the initial screening is now presented.