June 23, 2004

• Do you have a cervix?

  If you don’t have one, and the one you used to have wasn’t removed
  because of cancer, don’t ask your doctor for a Pap smear.  Even
  though you don’t need one, the chances are better than fifty-fifty that
  the doctor will perform the procedure anyway.

  One in five women in the U.S. over the age of eighteen, twenty-two
  million women in this country, have had hysterectomies.  That
  means, presumably, that none of them has a cervix.  However, ten million of
  them have reportedly had Pap smears to detect precancerous cells on the
  cervix.  That number does not include any whose uterus was removed
  because of cancer, or whose cervix was not removed with the uterus, all
  of whom it would be appropriate for a doctor to screen for cervical
  cancer.  Those ten million Pap tests were entirely unnecessary.

  If a woman’s cervix has been removed, a doctor will typically scrape
  vaginal cells, a procedure that researchers call problematic. Vaginal
  cancer is extremely rare and false positives are fairly high. The
  unnecessary test can result, therefore, in cancer treatment for a
  cancer that is not even there, according to the New York Times.

  Not surprisingly, some
  published reports are quick to defend the doctors who do this, claiming
  that insurance company benchmarks and patients’ demands account for the
  unnecessary testing.  That sounds like bullshit to me, unless of
  course the extra testing is used as justification for higher insurance
  premiums that more than pay for the tests, and unless–of course–the
  doctor in question would prefer to subject his patient to unnecessary
  discomfort and possibly unneeded cancer treatment, rather than risk
  losing her to another doctor by telling her she doesn’t really need a
  test on an organ she no longer possesses.

  Bah, humbug!
   
  Feminist Daily News 6/23/2004: Unnecessary Pap Smears Administered to 10 Million Women

  • 5:29 pm
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