When it comes to your health, we’d all prefer not to have the term abnormal attached to any test results, but what if that’s what happened with your recent Pap smear?
Right off the bat, we want to underscore that abnormal Pap test results are quite common and not necessarily cause for concern — at least not until we investigate further.
At CareOne Internal Medicine and Primary Care in Houston and Katy, Texas, our team provides comprehensive women’s health care, including regular Pap smears to screen for cancer. And we want to assure you that abnormal test results are common and not cause for sounding any alarms just yet.
When we perform a Pap smear, we swab the surface of your cervix to collect cells that we examine under a microscope. What we’re on the lookout for are cells that we deem abnormal, which can signal a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection or precancerous cell changes, and it’s most often the former.
To put this into perspective, most of us develop an HPV infection during our lives, and in most cases, our bodies can successfully fight off the infection. There are some HPV strains, however, that can lead to more dangerous issues such as cervical cancer.
Again, we’re going to add a dose of perspective — cervical cancer isn’t all that common and is diagnosed in slightly more than 13,000 women in the United States each year.
More encouraging is the fact that cervical cancer is rarely detected in women who’ve undergone regular Pap smears throughout their lives. This is because there’s much we can do to prevent a cancer diagnosis on the heels of abnormal Pap smear results.
If your Pap smear results are abnormal, the next steps depend on a few things, such as:
In most cases, the next step after an abnormal test result is follow-up testing, which we might perform within a few months.
If a follow-up Pap smear still shows abnormal cells, we may perform a colposcopy, a procedure in which we remove a tiny piece of tissue from your cervix for closer examination. This cervical biopsy will reveal more details about the cell changes around your cervix.
The good news is that if we find potentially problematic precancerous or abnormal cells of concern, we can remove the cells from your cervix.
Again, in a majority of cases, the abnormal cells resolve on their own as your body fights against HPV infections and abnormal cells. And we track this with further Pap smears and HPV tests to make sure your cervix is in the clear.
So, if your Pap smear results come back as abnormal, it’s not time to hit the panic button — not by a long shot. Instead, you can know that this thorough screening is doing its job and allowing you to stay one step ahead of your health.
If you have more questions about your Pap smear results or you’d like to schedule further testing, please don’t hesitate to contact CareOne Internal Medicine and Primary Care today to book an appointment.
