Previous Papanicolaou and Hybrid Capture 2 human papillomavirus testing results of 5699 women with histologically diagnosed cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3.

Introduction: Cervical cancer remains an important public health problem in Chinese women owing to the lack of a national screening program. The aim of the present study was to evaluate human papillomavirus (HPV) and Papanicolaou (Pap) test results preceding the histologic diagnosis of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3 (CIN2/3) in China's largest College of American Pathologists-certified clinical laboratory.

Materials And Methods: All cases of CIN2/3 histologically diagnosed from January 2011 to August 2016 were retrieved from the pathology department records. The Pap cytology and HPV test results from the 6 months before the CIN2/3 diagnoses were analyzed.

Results: A total of 5699 patients with histologically diagnosed CIN2/3 had previous Pap and/or HPV Hybrid Capture 2 testing results within the previous 6 months. The average age was 39.5 years (range, 16-82 years). Of these patients, 4288 had Pap test findings (average, 1.5 months) available. The results were high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion in 44.1%, low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion in 20.0%, atypical squamous cells, cannot exclude high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, in 16.0%, atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance, in 12.3%, atypical glandular cells in 0.7%, and negative in 6.9%. Of the 5699 patients, 2546 had HPV Hybrid Capture 2 test results (average, 1.4 months) available. Of these, 91.7% had positive results and 8.3% had negative results. Of 1135 patients with both previous Pap and HPV results, 7.1% had negative HPV results and 8.0% had negative Pap results (P = 0.38). Only 21 patients (1.9%) had double negative results.

Conclusions: The present study has reported the previous results of HPV testing and Pap cytology for patients with high-grade cervical squamous precursor lesions in a population of women in China who had not undergone intensive previous screening. Both high-risk HPV and Pap cytology had similar negative testing rates for these women, although double negative results were less common. These results support the value of combined testing in the detection of cervical cancer precursors.