P/N: EVSP-2020
Gynaecologic cytology (the Pap test) is the most successful cancer screening program. Even though the test itself has been estimated to have as low as 50% sensitivity for the detection of abnormalities of the cervix. The reason that the test has been successful in populations into which it has been introduced is the fact that annual screening intervals given patient multiple “shots” at the detection of a neoplastic process that has a generally slow progression to invasive carcinoma and which is equally well-treated at each step in this progression. In effect, the principal is that a miss one year will be a hit the next, with no untoward effects. The high false-negative rate of the Pap test is multifactorial. Reason range from inadequate sampling of lesions present – which may be small, incomplete transfer (and hence loss) of abnormal cells from those collected on the sampling device to a glass slide (typically in conventional smears), poor preparation, screening errors, and misinterpretation of abnormal cells identified on screening. The introduction of modern sampling devices, liquid-based specimen preparation, offers several clear advantages over conventional smears: the opportunity to prepare duplicate slides and even cell block preparations from the residual samples; the option of “out-of-vial” aliquoting for HPV, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea testing; an improved substrate for automated screening devices; and a thinner cell preparation that most pathologists and cytotechnologists find less tiring to review than smears.
The PathTezt™ EasyVial slide processor is a method for converting a liquid suspension of a
cervical sample automatically into a homogenous thin layer cell while maintaining diagnostic cell clusters. The process includes cell preservation, randomization, and gravity sedimentation to create a Thin-layer cell preparation. The result of the preparation process is a PathTezt™ Cyto-Slide for use in routine cytology screening.