INTRALABORATORY REPRODUCIBILITY IN CERVICAL CYTOLOGY - RESULTS OF THEAPPLICATION OF A 100-SLIDE SET

In order to evaluate the agreement and accuracy of cervical (vaginal) cytologic diagnoses, 16 cytologists from a large laboratory in Florenc e, Italy, with experience ranging from 2 to 25 years, independently ex amined a set of 100 slides. A common reporting form based on a seven-c ategory classification system was used. Concordance was calculated for each pairwise comparison between the 16 cytologists and between each cytologist and the target diagnosis. The values of the K statistic for the whole laboratory were .49 for the multiple raters comparison and .59 for the target diagnosis comparison, showing a relatively good deg ree of agreement.