CANCER IN PATIENTS WITH ATYPICAL SQUAMOUS CELLS OF UNDETERMINED SIGNIFICANCE (ASCUS) FROM CERVICAL PAP SMEARS

Abstract. To determine the prevalence and factors associated with histologic diagnoses of High Grade Squamous Intraepithelial Lesions (HSIL) or invasive cervical cancer in women with a cytologic diagnosis of atypical squamous cells of undertermined significance (ASCUS), medical records of women with an ASCUS Pap smear from January 2003 to December 2006 were reviewed. Of 287 women with ASCUS Pap smears in whom data were available, 189 were annotated with “favoring a premalignant or malignant process”, 74 with “favoring reactive”, and 24 with “not otherwise specified”. The prevalences of HSIL and invasive cervical cancer were 9.1 % and 1.2%, respectively. Only subtypes of ASCUS were significantly associated with the detection of HSIL or invasive cancer, 12.7 % with favoring premalignant or malignant pro-cess, 2.7 % with favoring reactive, and 16.7 % in with ASCUS-NOS (p=0.034). cervical cytologic screening programs. The first system to detect and report cervical cy-tology was the Papanicolaou system which was developed in 1943 and has been used for many years (Papanicolaou and Traut, 1943). However, with emerging knowledge about human papilloma virus (HPV) as an im-portant etiologic agent in cervical cancer, a new cytologic classification, the Bethesd