governments have also recognized this backlog and are
investing in screening and diagnostics to
help make up for lost time, but it’s a good opportunity to pause and ask how effective our cervical cancer screening methods truly are, and what more we could be doing to end this disease.
we continue to rely on the pap smear, a nearly
100-year-old
technology that has seen little innovation despite its near-ubiquitous use. and while it has been one of the most successful cancer screening tools, there are newer approaches that could be more broadly adopted in canada to help us reach our goal.
liquid-based cytology pap tests are
a
more recent innovation that
can
provide sensitive testing of the cervix cells and can more accurately identify abnormal cells that may lead to cervical cancer.
it produces fewer false-negatives and false-positives,
reducing the need for repeat testing
and allows for easy hpv reflex testing. yet across canada, only a handful of provinces have implemented liquid-based cytology to improve their cervical cancer screening programs, including
saskatchewan
, that made the switch right in the middle of a pandemic.
and when it comes to hpv testing, new technologies can also help to root out the main cause of cervical cancer. as recently as just two years ago, mrna was a little-known method of fighting disease. now thanks to the widespread adoption of mrna vaccines to fight covid-19, we know it’s capable of carrying important information to the body. this technology can also be used to identify hpv.