Caitlin Rose was 21 years old and her screening had been delayed when her then-partner pushed her to visit the doctor. Her HPV test detected subtypes of the virus that are responsible for 70% of cervical cancers and precancerous lesions.
“Something I thought wasn’t a big deal and had been postponing for years suddenly became something really serious and potentially cancerous,” said Rose, who is now 27 years old.
What happens after the HPV test?
- More than nine out of 10 people screened return a negative HPV result, according to data from the Cervical Cancer Screening Program.
- HPV is detected in approximately 8% of HPV tests. Of these patients, 2% will return a “high-grade” result indicating the presence of C16 and C18, subtypes of the virus that are responsible for 70% of cervical cancers and precancerous lesions.
- These patients will be offered a colposcopy, a procedure that will allow the doctor to closely examine the cervix, vagina and vulva to detect abnormal cells.
- The other 6% will return an “intermediate” result, positive for other types of HPV indicating that they should take another sample using a speculum and regular monitoring. Most infections will go away on their own in a couple of years.
A biopsy didn’t detect cancer cells, “but now it’s something I really need to monitor very closely,” he said. Rose, now 27, gets HPV tests every six months.
“I still have girlfriends who keep postponing it because it’s uncomfortable … Now that we have the option to do it ourselves, it removes that element of both physical and mental discomfort,” she said.
An estimated 900 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer and 237 died of the disease in Australia in 2021.
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Women who need to be tested for HPV can visit their GP as usual, where their doctor or nurse will explain the two sample collection options and offer a private place to collect a sample using a swab. PCR.
“You don’t have to get up to the cervix,” Saville said. “It’s very easy and direct.
A meta-analysis found that a cervical screening test with a vaginal sample collected by itself is as accurate as a sample collected by the doctor taken from the cervix during a speculum examination.
“Hopefully, by making it universally available, it will become an option for everyone,” Saville said. “There will be a lot of women who will appreciate it, including me,” she said. “Speculation can be uncomfortable and unpleasant and becomes more uncomfortable with menopause.”
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Deborah Bateson, a practice professor at the Daffodil Center, University of Sydney School of Medicine and Health, said Australia could be on track to become the first country to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035, “but only we will get there if you can bring in those people who are out of control. “
“Australia’s cervical cancer screening rate is about 56 per cent … and those rates would be significantly lower among some groups, for example, people with disabilities,” Bateson said.
“Aboriginal and island women in Torres Strait have nearly four times higher mortality rate from cervical cancer [than the general population]which is a terrible gap, ”he said.
Allison Rossiter, CEO of Roche Diagnostics Australia, which supplies the self-test kits, said the tests will be the most widely available in Australia.
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