Cervical smear uncertainty

LizzieE88

Hi all,

I had my recent smear test in April through the national screening programme and got the results today which are all clear. I'm just a bit worried whether I can trust this result given what's happened so I was wondering if there is any benefit to getting a private smear done or us anyone else considering this?

I know I will have to wait 3 months to have another test but if I opt for a private smear does this go to the same testing labs used by the national screening programme?

Thanks a mil

FizzleSticks

This post has been deleted.

heretothere

If it is worrying you go back and talk to you GP about getting another one. I think you might have to pay for a 2nd one as you only get one free one every 3 years. I do think that with everything that went on the last few months women should be given another free one if they want. But your doctor might not be able to do anything about it.

laserlad2010

Do you think you have cancer? Have you got symptoms, or anything that makes you think you have it?

If you do, you need a colposcopy, not a smear. Look, you, amongst many, many other people, don't seem to understand how screening works so hopefully I'll be able to reassure you.

Any medical test has correct and incorrect results. Some tests are super accurate and we can rely on the results when we are worried. For example, someone has a lump in their breast, so a doctor is asking "is this cancer" - and the tests performed on the sample are really accurate, so we can rely on the results.

A smear is not super accurate, so if you went to your doctor with, say, bleeding outside your period, you shouldn't have a smear, because you can't rely on the result (no matter who looks at it, or where it's processed).

A smear is great when you do hundreds of thousands of them, because some of the time it will be correct, and you'll save lives by catching cancer early. The problem is - it's not very accurate, so you wouldn't rely on it if you were super worried.

So, for the entire country of Ireland, where women were dying from cervical cancer which wasn't being picked up, by bringing smear tests in doctors managed to catch about 6 out of every 10 cervical cancers, potentially saving the lives of 6 women in every 10 cancers. Unfortunately, that leaves 4 women who were always going to have cancer, and were always going to be missed (e.g. Vicky Phelan).

So I'm asking you - do you, right now, think you have cancer? Because you're at risk of picking up any cancer. Breast, bowel, skin, brain - there's always a risk. Before you heard about the smear test scandal, you didn't think you had cancer, so why are you worried now?

Once you figure that bit out - "I do/do not think I have cancer", then you'll know what to do.

1. "I do think I have cancer" - Go to your GP immediately. Request a colposcopy. Do not accept a smear (remember, they aren't reliable for one person alone, they were never meant to be). The colposcopy will look directly at your cervix and take any samples needed.
2. "I do not think I have cancer" - Then why are you worried? You are always at risk of developing cervical cancer by being a woman, unfortunately. Without getting the HPV vaccine there's no way to reduce that risk. Getting another smear is useless for your health, like all smears are useless for someones own health.

What a smear does is reduce Ireland's cervical cancer rates and cervical cancer deaths, which Cervical Check has done by 7% every year since 2008

A healthy woman should get a smear because it might save her life one day. It won't tell you that you don't have cancer - thats not the point of the test.