A new study suggested cervical cancer screening guidelines should be revised, after researchers found an increase in the number of cases in women aged 65 to 69.
The American Cancer Society and American Society of Clinical Pathology currently recommends women stop their routine screening at age 65. However, an analysis made by researchers from the University of Maryland in Baltimore called for a review of this guideline.
Lead author of the study Dr. Anne Rositch and her colleagues examined data of over 100,000 women from a national health database gathered from 2000 to 2009. They also used survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which asked women if they ever had hysterectomy - the surgical removal of the uterus.
Their findings revealed that there were 11.7 cervical cancer cases per 100,000 people prior to hysterectomies, and 18.6 cases per 100,000 after the surgery. The researchers were surprised to find that the incidence persisted with an even higher rate for women aged 65 to 69 - 24.7 cases per 100,000 women, even after hysterectomies.
"Current guidelines recommend exiting women with recent negative screening from routine screening at age 65 years, and yet our corrected calculations show that women just past this age have the highest rate of cervical cancer," said senior author Dr. Patti Gravitt from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore in a press release.
The researchers also observed that cervical cancer incidences peaked during women's menopausal age. Analysts are now studying whether the condition was triggered by estrogen. If proven, the results of the study could help with prevention of the disease by managing estrogen levels.
"Our data suggest that the decline [at menopause] appears to be an artifact resulting from, at least in part, failure to correct for hysterectomy prevalence. There is a potential role of aging in the natural history of cervical cancer," the authors wrote.
They also noticed that the incidents varied according to race. There were 24.7 cases per 100,000 white women, but more than double for black women, with 53 cases per 100,000.
This study was published in the May 12 issue of Cancer.
