Cervical cancer screening laboratory practices may evolve with new terminology and technologies.
To investigate changes in cervical cytopathology practice resulting from the 2014 Bethesda System updates and screening technologies.
Questionnaires accompanied 2016 and 2017 mailings of the College of American Pathologists PAP Education program.
In 2016, most laboratories surveyed had adopted or were planning to adopt 2014 Bethesda System updates, and the majority (53%; 365 of 689) used an age cutoff of 45 for reporting benign-appearing endometrial cells. However, 51.3% (354 of 690) of laboratories used the term low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, cannot exclude high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, for cases with indeterminate features, and 44.9% (298 of 664) of laboratories used a 5000-cell cutoff for minimum squamous cellularity for posthysterectomy and posttherapy specimens. Reporting rates for cervical cytology metrics changed very little from 2013 to 2016, and the median ratio of atypical squamous cells to squamous intraepithelial lesion cases was 1.9 for ThinPrep and 1.8 for SurePath preparations. Most laboratories (59.4%; 389 of 655) did not offer stand-alone primary human papillomavirus (HPV) testing in 2017, and primary HPV testing accounted for a low proportion of HPV testing volumes. The Roche Cobas method was the most common platform for HPV primary screening.
These questionnaire surveys provide data about the current status of cervical cytology screening, including changes related to the 2014 Bethesda System updates and the adoption of HPV primary screening techniques.