A Pap smear, also known as Papanicoloau smear, is a microscopic examination of cells scraped from the cervix and is used to detect cancerous or pre-cancerous conditions of the cervix or other medical conditions. It was named after Dr. George N. Papanicoloau, who first described it in 1928 and since its introduction, the Pap smear has helped reduce cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates b...

background: abnormal pap smear consists of premalignant or malignant cervical lesions. many of premalignant cervical lesions will never progress to invasive malignancy, or even may regress over the time. thus, there is always a risk of overtreatment of patients with an abnormal pap smear. a long-term follow-up of these patients can reveal final events associated with each  subtype of abnormal p...

A microscopic examination of an appropriately prepared and well-stained blood smear by a knowledgeable laboratory professional is necessary and clinically useful in a number of circumstances and for a variety of reasons. In this article, an attempt is made to delineate the purpose and criteria for blood smear examination in a variety of circumstances that are encountered in everyday laboratory ...

Little is known about the drivers of two-month sputum smear non-conversion in the South African context. Our study sought to determine these factors in new sputum smear positive tuberculosis (TB) patients in South Africa's Free State Province. A retrospective record review was conducted for all TB patients on treatment between 2003 and 2009. Two-month sputum smear non-conversion was defined by ...

AIMS To explore the public awareness, knowledge, and attitudes of Saudi women towards Pap smear as a screening test for cervical cancer. METHODS A descriptive cross-sectional study took place in four major secondary and tertiary healthcare hospitals located in the capital city Riyadh between January 2016 and June 2016. A self-administered, coded, close-ended survey was randomly distributed to...

BACKGROUND Coverage of cervical pap smear test in Nepal is below general global values. One of the reasons may be that cervical cancer prevention policy of Nepal has 'Visual Inspection of Cervix with Acetic Acid' as the only screening tool. The focus of present study was to find out association of demographic factors, knowledge and attitude regarding cervical Pap smear test with its practice by...

BACKGROUND Haemorrhagic fluids are samples which are commonly received for cytological examination. The diagnostic efficacy suffers when large numbers of red blood cells are present in the sample. Haemorrhagic fluids are processed by a variety of techniques and the common goal of each technique is selection and concentration of an adequate number of tumour cells with intact cell morphologies, w...

BACKGROUND The Indian guidelines on following up sputum smear-negative Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients differ from the current World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines in that the former recommends two follow up sputum examinations (once at the end of intensive phase and the other at the end of treatment) while the latter recommends only one follow up sputum smear microscopy examination...