Merits and pitfalls of normal saline rehydrated air-dried cervical smears over conventional wet.fixed PAP smears: A comparative study.

Background: Cervical Papanicolaou (PAP) smear is the simplest, minimal invasive, and excellent screening method to reduce the female morbidity and mortality due to cervical carcinoma. Immediate alcohol fixation of the cervical smears is required to preserve nuclear details, delay in alcohol fixation leads to air drying artifacts. Rehydrating of the air-dried cervical pap smear with normal saline can help to overcome these artifacts and also have its own advantages.