Screening service in full swing as more and more women attend smear tests | Society

Women may have to wait months to get the results of cervical cancer screening because the planned closure of dozens of labs has left the service in "collapse," the Guardian was told.

The crisis was triggered by an increase in the number of women participating in smear tests as a result of a government awareness campaign launched last week. The campaign coincides with an exodus of biomedical scientists due to a restructuring process that will bring back nearly 50 hospital screening laboratories to nine this summer.

Alison Cropper, president of the British Cytopathology Association and consultant in biomedical sciences, said the Public Health England campaign was launched at the "worst possible time".

"The service is falling apart," she said.

Although the quality of the tests is not likely to be affected, she said, the campaign's "poorly thought out" schedule may leave women frustrated, over-anxious and less likely to participate in screening. l & # 39; future. Cropper stated that PHE had not considered requests to change the wording of the standard filtering letters, stating that the results would be sent within 14 days, although some labs already have arrears of several months .

The government launched its first uterine cervical cancer screening campaign last week after official figures revealed that the proportion of women participating in the tests had reached its lowest level in 20 years. Cervical screenings, also called smear tests, are free on the NHS for all women aged 25 to 64 years. Laboratories have reported a sharp increase in workload over the last two months, following the launch of the PHE campaign and other commercials, including the coronation A Street Scenario and a Woman Undergoing Pap smear. live in the Victoria Derbyshire BBC program.

However, the growing number of scientists leaving the country after the decision to centralize the screening system has been gaining renewed interest.

Pap smear tests usually look for abnormal changes in cervical cells that may indicate the early stages of cancer. Samples showing possible low grade changes are being tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer. Those with low-grade changes and HPV are then referred for additional testing (colposcopy).

However, research has shown that changing the order of lab screens and testing for HPV detects pre-cancerous lesions more effectively. Later this year, the NHS will adopt a first HPV test system, which also requires less manpower, and will centralize the work of nearly 50 laboratories to nine major centers, whose name is scheduled for next month.

In the meantime, many small laboratory scientists who have not bid for contracts under the new system have little incentive to remain until transfer.

A senior biomedical scientist working in a small hospital laboratory that will close later this year told the Guardian that nearly half of the staff had left at a time when the number of samples entering the lab had increased five-fold . A whiteboard in the lab's tea room that normally displays the count of the number of samples each week, now reads simply "a lot," she said. "We respect the delay of treatment of patients, general practitioners become nervous, nurses ask us what happens," said the scientist, who wishes to remain anonymous. "It's a complete disaster."

Cropper said that "no one in the profession" would disagree with the decision to move to the first HPV test, but that the implementation had not been thought through. "In smaller labs, leaving one or two people with stress has a disastrous effect," she said.

Professor Anne Mackie, Screening Director at Public Health England, said, "Screening can stop cancer before it appears, and estimates show that if everyone regularly attended, 83% of deaths could be prevented. Since the beginning of the program, about 5,000 lives a year have been saved, but the number of cervical screenings is at its lowest in 20 years. That's why we launched this campaign.

"Delays in obtaining women's results are far from what we would like, but it is important that women still undergo the test to identify abnormalities that could develop into cancer years later.

"We worked closely with NHS England to make sure the filtering system was notified in advance. It is more important to increase the number of women being screened and to prevent more deaths than to delay what was long overdue. "