And Now, New Guidelines for the Pap Test
The New York Times is reporting early this morning that a panel of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is recommending: a) that women not be tested until 21; b) that beginning at 30, and assuming three consecutive negative test results, screenings be reduced from every year to every third year; and, c) that testing can end altogether after age 65 with three straight tests without an abnormality in the last ten years.
First the PSA test, then mammograms and now Pap tests. An appreciation of the limitations of these tests, combined with the realization that many of the lesions detected by them never posed a risk, is responsible for this seismic-seeming shift. Changing a decades-long culture of screening early and often to catch cancer "when it's treatable" won't be easy and, as is apparent from the mammography fracas, won't happen without a fight.
