Talk:Pap test

Only for sexually active women?

The article says only sexually active women need have a regular pap smear. Why?.

Because it is a sexually transmitted disease

Ack! There's typically something like a 10 year lag between initial HPV infection and the development of cervical cancer. So "sexually active" is misleading - should be something more along the lines of "ever had sex." Reminds me of the slippery semantics of Clinton's "meaning of is is" question. Retroid 15:40, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jargon

This article seems to have a lot of jargon that may not be strictly necessary to convey the most salient info. Also, the jargon is all at the beginning. I'm worried that a lot of readers will get derailed by the hard technical stuff and may not make it to the interesting/important bits toward the end (how often to get tested, origin of the term "Pap" etc). Any objections to a radical de-jargonectomy? Or at least to moving the jargon down out of the Intro section? Retroid 15:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some other articles

[1]

Notable paragraph

Instead of the old method of scraping off some cells from the cervix using a spatula and "smearing" them onto a slide that can be looked at under the microscope, the sample is taken using a plastic brush which is then placed in a vial of fluid. The smear feels exactly the same for the woman, but for the staff in the laboratory the sample of cells is much easier to analyse. When practice nurses or GPs smeared cells on a slide using a spatula, lots of other types of cells would also be transferred making it difficult to see if there was any abnormalities and sometimes there would not be enough cells on the slide for the laboratories to make a proper assessment. But with LBC all the cells from the cervix are preserved in the fluid and can be separated out before being put on the slide making abnormalities much easier to spot. Although LBC is easier for laboratories, the data on whether it will help to pick up more abnormalities is unclear.

Agnes Nixon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Nixon "Nixon is believed to have written the first medical related storyline on a soap opera. A friend of Nixon's had died from cervical cancer, and Nixon wanted to do something to educate women about getting a Pap smear. She wrote it into Guiding Light by having the lead character, Bert Bauer, encounter a cancer scare. This storyline aired in 1962; Nixon had to work around some difficulties of getting this storyline to air, as she could not make use of the words “cancer,” “uterus,” and “Pap test”. However, after this storyline the number of women who took a Pap smear surged dramatically . In 2002 she received a special Sentinel for Health "pioneer award" for her work on Guiding Light."

Doesn't Nixon's storyline that influenced women to have a pap smear deserve a mention on the Pap Smear page?