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| |  American Women are Misinformed about Cervical Cancer and Pap Tests NORTHFIELD, Ill., Oct. 22, 1996 -- American women have a distorted knowledge of cervical cancer and Pap tests, according to a recent national survey commissioned by the College of American Pathologists. Pathologists, doctors who treat patients through laboratory medicine, fear that misinformed women may be less likely to seek an annual Pap test, thereby threatening the 70 percent reduction in deaths by cervical cancer in the Unites States since World War II. More than half of all women surveyed indicated that they did not know that the Pap examination is the single most effective screening test for detecting cancer known to medical science. The same number told pollsters that they believe that "cervical cancer is the number one killer of women." Cervical cancer was the number one cancer killer of women before the Pap test was introduced after World War II. Today lung cancer and breast cancer take lives of more American women than any other cancers. Heart disease is the number one killer of women. The Pap test's effectiveness as an annual procedure can be attributed in part to the fact that most cervical cancers are extremely slow in developing. Only slightly more than half of all respondents to the survey knew that if a pre-cancerous abnormality is missed one year, it is very likely that it will be found the following year, when it can still be treated. In fact, 80 percent of all women who die of cervical cancer in the United States are those who haven't had a Pap test in five years or more. Manual rescreening studies show that laboratories in the U.S. may fail to detect an abnormality in fewer than one percent of all the Pap examinations performed in this country. Furthermore, not all abnormalities detected on Pap smears are related to cancer or precancerous condition. Nonetheless, 25 percent of women believe that the Pap test misses 30 percent of cervical cancers and 10 percent believe that the Pap test fails to detect half of all cervical cancers. The misconceptions that American women have about cervical cancer may have been the result, in part, of recent media reports and advertising campaigns that have dramatized what can go wrong with a Pap examination. Almost 57 percent believe the best way to prevent cervical cancer is to have their Pap smear reviewed by an automated rescreening device, an instrument approved by the Food and Drug Administration barely a year ago. However, fewer than half of women who responded to the poll were aware that an automated rescreening may more than double the price of the otherwise cost-effective Pap test. One in four respondents think that their managed care plans will pay for the rescreening procedure (many won't) and about the same number told pollsters that they have no idea who would pay for it. The telephone survey was conducted by TeleNation between Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, 1996. It consisted of 503 interviews with women identified by single-stage, random digit-dial sample technique to pull from all available telephone households in the contiguous Unites States. Based on a sample size of 500 female respondents, the sample error of this survey is limited to plus or minus 4.5 percent with a 95 percent level of confidence. The College of American Pathologists (CAP) is a medical society serving more than 15,000 physician members and the laboratory community throughout the world. It is the world's largest association composed exclusively of pathologists and is widely considered the leader in laboratory quality assurance. The CAP is an advocate for high quality and cost-effective patient care.
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