Cervical cancer screening by cytology and the burden of epithelial abnormalities in low resource settings: a tertiary-center 42-year study.

Background: Cytological screening remains a high-impact practice, particularly in low-resource settings, for preventing cervical cancer. The examination of screening practices over time and the prevalence of epithelial abnormalities have not been investigated in longitudinal studies in one of the largest countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Methods: Routine healthcare data, between March 1981 and December 2022, were extracted from the database of the Early Cancer Detection Unit in a tertiary referral university hospital in the Greater Cairo Region, Egypt.