Too Few Women Getting Cervical Cancer Screening
By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
The number of women in the United
States who are getting the recom-
mended screenings for cervical cancer
is “unacceptably low,” researchers say.
In 2016, just over half of U.S. women
aged 21 to 29 and less than two-thirds
of women aged 30 to 65 were up-to-
date with cervical cancer screenings,
according to a new report.
Those rates are well below the 81 per-
cent self-reported rate in the 2015 U.S.
National Health Interview Survey, said
study author Dr. Kathy MacLaughlin,
and her colleagues. MacLaughlin is a
family medicine specialist at the Mayo
Clinic, in Rochester, Minn.
lines for average-risk women] ensures
precancerous changes are caught early
and may be followed more closely or
treated,” MacLaughlin explained in a
Mayo Clinic news release.The study
also found significant racial differenc-
es in cervical cancer screening rates.
“African-American women were 50
percent less likely to be up-to-date on
cervical cancer screening than white
women in 2016. Asian women were
nearly 30 percent less likely than white
women to be current on screening.
These racial disparities are especially
concerning,” MacLaughlin said.
Pap clinics with evening and Saturday
hours, offering cervical cancer screen-
ings at urgent care clinics, and at-home
testing kits for HPV (human papillo-
mavirus), the virus that causes most
cervical cancers.
“We, as clinicians, must start thinking
outside the box on how best to reach
these women and ensure they are re-
ceiving these effective and potentially
lifesaving screening tests,” she said.
The findings were published Jan. 7 in
the Journal of Women’s Health.
About 13,240 new cases of invasive
For their study, the researchers ana- cervical cancer were diagnosed in the
lyzed data gathered from more than United States in 2018, according to the
47,000 women in Olmsted County, American Cancer Society. January is
Minn., from 2005 to 2016.
Cervical Health Awareness Month.
“Routine screening every three years MacLaughlin said the findings show
with a Pap test or every five years with the need for new ways to increase cer-
a Pap-HPV co-test [the current guide- vical cancer screening rates, such as