For decades the annual Pap test was women’s chief protection against cervical cancer. That all changed when a test for human papillomavirus, the cause of most cervical cancer, was approved in 2003.
With the HPV test, women don’t need to get Pap tests as often. But that message hasn’t gotten through to many doctors.
Just 39 percent of clinicians ordered HPV tests for women when they went in for a checkup in five Michigan clinics, researchers found. Other doctors were ordering the HPV test too often. Many still performed annual Pap tests even though women can wait for five years if they tested free of HPV.
And some doctors were prescribing annual Pap tests and HPV tests. “That is really excessive,” says Dr. Mack Ruffin, a cancer prevention researcher at the University of Michigan. He is a coauthor of the report, which was published Thursday in theJournal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Source: NPR.ORG AUTHOR NANCY SHUTE