scout

Cervical Cancer

Latest News


CME Content


In this interview we discuss HPV-associated cancers, which are on the rise, and the low vaccination coverage for HPV with Edgar Simard, PhD, MPH, senior epidemiologist of surveillance research, who studies the impact of prevention and screening on cancer incidence at the American Cancer Society.

One of the highlights of the released abstracts is “Cervical cancer risk for 330,000 women undergoing concurrent HPV testing and cervical cytology in routine clinical practice” (J Clin Oncol 29: 2011 (suppl; abstr 1508). The large-scale study showed the effectiveness of human papillomavirus (HPV) testing alone or in combination with cytology testing for identifying women at high-risk for cervical cancer development.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, with approximately 20 million people currently infected and an additional 6.2 million infected each year, despite increased media attention to HPV as a cause of cervical cancer and the availability of a vaccination to reduce HPV-associated cervical cancer.

With the increased use of human papillomavirus vaccines such as Gardasil and Cervarix, the medical community is likely to see a decrease in cases of genital warts and other complications caused by several HPV strains. But it may be a decade or two before oncologists can expect to see a decline in cervical cancer rates attributable to the use of these relatively new vaccines.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has recommended that women begin cervical cancer screening at age 21 rather than three years after the onset of sexual activity, as was previously recommended by the group.