PAP SMEAR FOLLOW-UP AMONG WOMEN WHO NEED TREATMENT AND REPEATED PAP SMEAR TEST

The aim of this study to investigate the effectiveness of the Pap smear test. There were 11885 Pap smear test records for women in South Tehran health centers in 1999. The effectiveness was defined as the proportion of women who should have been returned for repeated Pap smear test following their treatments. We studied the Pap smear records to calculate the effectiveness. Among those 447 women who were eligible for repeating Pap smear test, only 219 (49.1%) were accessible for interview. Among those who were interviewed, only 74 women had returned to repeat Pap smear. Thus, the effectiveness of cervical cancer screening was found to be 34%. The main reasons for not returning to repeat Pap smear were: lack of knowledge about follow-up necessity (59%), and lack of time (22%), fear of finding refractory disease (4%). The findings suggest that the quality of Pap smear test in Tehran is poor and needs to be improved.