Never skip a screening

A smear test, or cervical screening, saves thousands of lives each year. So if you’ve let yours slide due to the pandemic, it’s time to get it booked in

- DR PHILIPPA KAYE

Do you know when your last cervical screening was and when your next one should be? Or perhaps you received a letter about it during lockdown, but just put it to one side to arrange your appointment later?

If that’s the case, you wouldn’t be alone. It’s thought that many people with a cervix missed their appointment due to COVID-19. Cervical screening was temporarily stopped in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and while it was not officially stopped in England, invites were not sent for a period of time and appointments were delayed. All cervical-screening programmes have now restarted so, if you’re due one, it’s important to book yours in.

The reason cervical screening is so important is because it has the capacity to save lives – it can prevent cervical cancer before it even occurs. This is because cervical screening doesn’t actually pick up cervical cancer, but detects high-risk human papilloma virus (HPV) and changes to cells that occur before cancer develops – which can then be treated.

Previously, the cervical-screening programme looked for pre-cancerous changes to the cells of the cervix. But in recent years there has been a change, in that now the programme looks for HPV, which causes the majority of cases of cervical cancer. If this virus is found, then the cells are assessed for changes. The process of taking the sample is the same, though – it is just what happens at the lab that has changed!