Updated guidelines from the US Preventive Services Task Force call for women to undergo PAP screening once every three years, beginning at age 21 and ending around age 65, to detect potential pre-cancerous lesions
A lab technician who screens PAP smears believes the FDA may have approved dysfunctional products to allow companies to increase profits, and that companies are engaging in dishonest advertising of the products
The new PAP test is advertised as “extraordinarily more accurate than a conventional pap smear,” citing 100-230 percent greater accuracy, yet other studies refutes such claims. Many have found no increased accuracy at all
To read the test, a new expensive computerized microscope is used. But the device tends to miss abnormal cell changes when those changes occurred in large clusters and misread air bubbles and dark colored benign cells