Sarcouncil Journal of Medical Sciences

Abstract: Cervical cytology (Pap smear) is a rather popular screening method with variability in the quality of diagnosis quality. Cervical biopsies have been the gold standard in terms of definitive diagnosis using histopathology. This paper sought to evaluate the Pap smear cytology and histopathology diagnosis and to establish how accurate the Pap smear is in diagnosing cervical lesions in a group of 92 patients. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 92 patients in the different hospitals in Iraq within a 12-month range of the follow-up period that is between June 2023 and June 2024. Sampling of the cervix was done in both traditional (71.74%) and liquid-based (28.26%) cytology samples. The clinical manifestations in the patients were noted, and most frequently, it was irregular vaginal bleeding (40.1%) and vaginal discharge (33.7%). The Pap smear was assessed with regard to histopathological biopsy findings as the benchmarks. In addition, the age group that was affected the most was 40-50 years (41.30%). Cervicitis and CIN I (n=35 and n=34, respectively) were found in histopathological examination, whereas NILM and LSIL (n=34 and n=25, respectively) were found in cytology most commonly. The association of cytology and histology had a significant correlation (P = 0.0001). The Pap smear had a sensitivity of 100% and a specificity of 42.0 in terms of the accuracy of the diagnostic. Positive Predictive Value (PPV) was 18.96, and the Negative Predictive Value (NPV) was 100. Although Pap smear cytology is highly sensitive and has a high predictive value, which is negative, of culling disease, it is also characterized by poor specificity, meaning that it has a high probability of wrongful diagnoses.