They Say: Cervical Cancer Screens Bad for Teens
Just like last week’s announcement that women can put off breast exams until fifty, we weren’t surprised to hear the hew and cry over the new ruling from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology that women can limit pap smears to every other year.
Are insurance companies just try to save a little cash? Are women going to get by with the uncomfortable leg flop just once every other year?
So here’s what fascinated us at Strollerderby: we’ve always heard that our daughters needed a visit to the OB/GYN to be tested for cervical cancer the minute she became sexually active (OK, more like within three years after, but to a mother it was “rush her butt to the gyno,” and can you blame them?).
The ACOG now says no way - not only is she at a “very low risk,” but the docs are actually warning the even screening her “may lead to unnecessary and harmful evaluation and treatment.”
The biggest fear is that the adolescent cervix has a higher incidence of HPV-related precancerous lesions, but the majority will resolve on their own without treatment. Treating them, they’ve found, can actually have a more devastating affect on a girl’s reproductive system than leaving them alone to naturally disappear. Among them: premature births have jumped in women who had treatment on these pre-cancerous lesions during their teen years.
Ironically, they’re actually saying the pap smear is to THANK for the huge dip in cervical cancers in the last 30 years. And we’re imagining this little thing called Gardasil played a role as well.
Image: tradeget
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Tags: cervical cancer, gardasil, hpv, Jeanne Sager, pap smear, pre-cancerous lesions, premature births, they say
3 Comments
Alison commented on Nov 25 09 at 1:07 pmGardasil hasn’t been on the market long enough to have an effect on the cervical cancer rate as most cervical cancers grow very slowly and the decline in cervical cancer in the developed world predated Gardasil (and most present day cases are found in women who do not get Pap smears)
“Since the advent and widespread use of screening Papanicolaou (Pap) smears, which detect asymptomatic preinvasive lesions at the earliest stages, the incidence of cervical cancer has dramatically decreased from 32 cases per 100,000 women in the 1940s to 8.3 cases per 100,000 women in the 1980s.”
Mistress_Scorpio commented on Nov 25 09 at 2:05 pmIn my early 20s I had a butcher of a gyno… I just picked him out of the covered providers in my employer provided insurance plan. Stupid, I know. Well, he decided from a visual exam that I had precancerous lesions on my cervix and right then and there he cauterized them. As in, the room was soon filled with the smell of burning flesh. My flesh. I look down and smoke is coming from my vj. I’ll spare you the aftermath, but flash forward to my son’s birth 15 years later and they find my cervix can only dilate but so far because of the scar tissue from that horrible procedure. They had to pry it open manually to break the scar tissue. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones, that my cervix wasn’t entirely ruined and that I could still even carry a child.
Sara commented on Nov 25 09 at 4:26 pmI think it’s a good decision if for nothing else making it a whole lot easier for teens to go get birth control without the fear of a pap-smear first.
