AN ASSESSMENT OF PARTIAL RESCREENING AS AN INTERNAL QUALITY-CONTROL METHOD FOR CERVICAL SMEARS

Partial screening was performed on 10 800 cervical smears, comprising 8640 fried negative and unsatisfactory smears and 2160 newly received smears prior to conventional screening. Each slide was screened for 30 s and those considered abnormal were reviewed by standard screening. Partial screening led to the detection of 27 additional infections and 44 additional cytological abnormalities. These detection rates are be tter than those obtained with the traditional method of rescreening on ly a proportion of smears. Amongst the smears partially screened befor e conventional screening, partial screening detected 37-66% of infecti ons and 22-71% of cytological abnormalities. We recommend the use of p artial rescreening of all negatively reported smears as a method of in ternal quality control in cervical cytology laboratories.