HPV Testing Approved By FDA For First Line Cancer Detection!

Close to the May 13th birthday of Dr. George Papanicolaou's the FDA approves HPV test as the first line test for cervical cancer instead of getting a pap smear

At Women's Health Practice we are excited to thank our ATHENA study participants for leading the way to one of the momentous FDA decisions of the decade. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved the cobas HPV Test (Roche Molecular Systems, Inc) for primary cervical cancer screening in women aged 25 years or older. This decision heavily relied on this test for their ruling. We have been following the FDA's position on this test. It was the first human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA test approved alone to detect high-risk HPV. The test is recommended for first-line screening, and can specifically identify HPV genotypes 16 and 18, which are responsible for about 70% of all cervical cancers. It also concurrently detects 12 other high-risk genotypes (31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 66, and 68). If you go to your gyno for a pap she may in fact order an HPV test first. If that test shows you have a high risk HPV type, the 16 or the 18, you will likely be offered further testing, such as the colposcopy, to determine if you have precancer or cancerous changes of your cervix. If you do not have the high risk HPV,but test positive for other HPV types, the pap test will be done to help determine what additional screening you need. Based on the ATHENA study the cobas HPV Test received FDA approval in 2011, to be used in conjunction with or as a follow-up to cell cytology, for women aged 30 years and older. Meaning, essentially, if you have an abnormal pap you then would receive an HPV test to determine the need for further evaluation. Although this is the FDA rule, and your gyno may want to embark on this right away, the organizations which rule on protocols, such as ACOG, have not yet issued statements to their physicians on how they would like them to incorporate this into their recommendations on cervical cancer screening. Other organizations are now going farther and stating that HPV test may be better than pap tests. "Primary HPV screening might be a viable alternative to Pap screening alone," said Julia Gage, a new study's lead author from the National Institutes of Health's National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. They found that doing the HPV test only is very accurate, but about 20 women out of 100,000 developed cervical cancer in the three years following a negative Pap test, compared to 11 of 100,000 who developed the cancer during the three years after receiving a negative HPV test. that means 10 women were missed. Would you want to be one of those ten who missed their chance for very early detection. For women interested in finding out more about HPV testing, or participating in future Women's Health Practice clinical research trials go to our website at www.womenshealthpractice.com

Passing Your Uterine Lining, Menstrual Period Norms

Decidual Cast Periods can be fairly easy, passing some tissue at a time, or off can come the whole lining in one piece called a decidual cast. Generally the lining of the uterus is only 6-8 mm thick at the time of the menstrual period, and it is shed gradually, a few cells at a time. The decidual cast is when the entire lining passes spontaneously. It's not uncommon, but it usually both uncomfortable, and alarming to some. But us women are designed to have some sort of periods Or Not? We have to pass tissue each month. Or Not? Are they good for us? Or Not? Do we want them? Or Not? Is this something that is individual? Or Not? It's a complex topic that I will be discussing a lot over my time in this blog. So lets start with basics: How much do we bleed and what are we loosing, and just what was this that the patient passed? And another basic: track your periods, and the Women's Health Practice site http://www.womenshealthpractice.com/media/pdf/menstrual_chart.pdf you...

Post-Endometrial Ablation Syndrome

If you have had an endometrial ablation and have developed symptoms of pelvic pain you might have post endometrial ablation syndrome. What is post-endometrial ablation syndrome? It is a constellation of symptoms due to entrapped blood or tissue within a uterus that has previously undergone an endometrial ablation. We are able to diagnose this at Women's Health Practic e but occasionally other conditions are causing similar symptoms. Other complications of endometrial ablation include pregnancy, risks from pre-existing conditions such as a polyp or fibroid, an infection of the uterus, or a pregnancy. If you have had a tubal ligation then it is possible that the condition could be post-ablation tubal sterilization syndrome. The ablation procedure is designed to destroy all lining tissue, but in fact there is no way to confirm the completeness of the ablation. It is thought that either residual or regrowth of the tissue is producing the symptoms of post-endometrial ablation syndrom...

You Have an IUD: But a Positive Pregnancy Test

Fortunately IUD pregnancy failures are rare. But if you have an IUD for contraception, and you get a positive pregnancy test, you probably ask yourself, what next? Well, make your gyno appointment promptly, this is a condition that is not typically an emergency, but it can be and it’s not handled over the phone or on a blog, or through self diagnosis! That being said, some researchers from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas decided to look back at over 4100 women who had IUDs and of those 42 cases who became pregnant in their institution, over about a year period of time, to help understand what these women could expect when they got to their gyno and what actually happened to their pregnancies. Accurate pregnancy diagnosis, pelvic examination, and pelvic ultrasound were the cornerstones of the evaluations. They had very specific ways they looked at their ultrasound to prove there was no pregnancy in the fallopian tube, or partially in the fallopian tube...

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