Cervicovaginal cytology in patients undergoing pelvic radiotherapy using the Focalpoint system: results from the RODEO study

BACKGROUND Evaluate the performance of the Focalpoint system in identifying and classifying cervical cytology alterations from samples collected from patients treated with Radiotherapy (RT). METHODS The reproducibility of manual and automated screening by cytotechnologists using the BD Focalpoint GS Imaging System was examined. Samples were collected from May 2010 to August 2011. RESULTS A total of 378 treated with RT and 8,967 cytology samples from patients without previous RT, were evaluated. The kappa values for cytological diagnoses read manually and automated in cases without previous RT were as follows: < ASC-H vs. ≥ ASC-H = 0.71; < LSIL vs. ≥ LSIL = 0.66; and < HSIL vs. ≥ HSIL = 0.67. The kappa for cytological diagnoses in post-RT women have showed: < ASC-H vs. ≥ ASC-H = 0.71; < LSIL vs. ≥ LSIL = 0.65; < HSIL vs. ≥ HSIL = 0.57. CONCLUSIONS There was no significant difference among the kappa values we found. Post-RT cytology showed small diagnostic agreement between manual and automated examination. VIRTUAL SLIDES The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/13000_2014_231.